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ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


MOopDERNISM AND ITS RESTATEMENT OF CHRISTIAN 
DoctRINE: IS IT THE TRUTH OF GoD? 


CHRISTIAN UNITY 


Tue MAN Curist Jesus: A Medilation on His Life 
and Death, and a Study of His Abiding Suffi- 


ciency 

Is THE CHRISTIAN A WORSHIPER OF GOD OR AN 
IDOLATER? 

CHRISTIAN COMPANIONSHIP 


MAN AND THE FuTuRE STATE: An Abridgment 
of “Facts and Theories as to a Future State” 
by F. W. Grant. 








ALTERNATIVE VIE 
FOR WEE BIBI 


BY, 


JOHN ‘BLOORE 


Nem York 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1925 


All rights reserved 


Copyricut, 1925, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 


Set up and electrotyped. 
Published September, 1925. 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY 
THE BERWICK & SMITH CO. 


FOREWORD 


The modern use of the Bible ! depends for a foundation 
upon the modern view of the Bible considered in this book. 

Louis Wallis in his book entitled Sociological Study of 
the Bible sets forth this modern view of the Scriptures 
concisely and systematically. We shall rely upon it 
chiefly for the material used in the present review and 
criticism. That this book is thoroughly reliable and 
scholarly, and a faithful presentation of results according 
to the Modern Critical School, is amply assured by the 
standing of the men to whom its contents were submitted 
for examination and criticism.*? For this side of the ques- 
tion we may then feel quite sure of our ground. We may 
confidently proceed on the basis of being correctly in- 
formed concerning the foundations upon which the modern 


approach to, and use of, the Bible is erected. 


1 This is ably advocated by Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick in his 
recent volume The Modern Use of the Bible (Macmillan, Septem- 
ber, 1924). For an examination of it see ch. v of this present book. 

2University of Chicago Press, Fourth impression, 1922. 

3 Consult its Prefatory xxxiii. 


5 


FOREWORD 


Our present interest is in these foundations, rather than 
in the superstructure. An honest effort has been made to 
supply by copious quotation and reference as full a pres- 
entation of the modern view as would be demanded by 
an ordinary reader who desired to obtain a good grasp of 
the subject. If the foundation is found defective, the 
superstructure is imperiled; if it is destroyed, the building 
itself must fall. 

The conclusions reached in this book will not be accept- 
able to those committed to modern liberalism. It hopes 
to be of service, however, to some of those who are dis- 
turbed by present controversy, and find it difficult to wend 
their way through its maze. It especially desires to come 
to the assistance of the bewildered and discouraged who 
may be on the verge of abandoning hope, not knowing 
which way to turn. If to any of these this book proves 
to be a stepping stone from the shifting sands of uncer- 
tainty to the solid ground of assurance concerning the 
Bible the writer’s desire will be fulfilled. 

JoHN BLOORE 


Plainfield, New Jersey. November, 1924. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 
I. THE MopERN VIEW OF THE BIBLE ........... 11 
IJ. PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM.......... 18 
EEEFEOTS (OF MODERNISM NOC ile Cila ceueelare bute & 59 
TVS SREFUTATION OF MODERNISM) s/s). ieee nee wiaels 74 
V. THE MopERN USE OF THE BIBLE............. 86 
VI. SoME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION......... 120 


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ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


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CHAPTER I 
THE MODERN VIEW OF THE BIBLE 


It will not be necessary here to review the various stages 
marking the course of Biblical scholarship during the past 
century. It will suffice if we present the highly developed 
system which is the culmination of those studies. This 
system was articulated and put into its present widely 
accepted form by Prof. Wellhausen? who is regarded, 
therefore, as the one who securely laid the foundation for 
the entire reconstruction of Biblical knowledge. He also 
greatly helped in building the superstructure. 

There has been no material advance since beyond the 
point reached by him, except in matters of detail. The 
position, which he took, may perhaps best be described as 
the documentary-historical-evolutionary viewpoint of Bible 
literature and history. By this is meant: 


1His epoch-making book, Geschichie Israels, appeared in 1878. 
“In that masterly work the new literary and historical study of the 
Bible was formulated and extended in such a way as to command the 
attention and assent of learned specialists; and it produced a revolu- 
tion.’ It came as “the climax of a long campaign for scientific study 
of the Bible.” 


11 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


(1) That this literature is made up of various early 
documents in which myth and legend are recorded side 
by side with actual historical events, and that these earlier 
documents were afterward combined with later literary 
productions of the ninth to the fifth or fourth centuries 
B. c. This is the process by which the Pentateuch, 
Joshua and the other historical books (Judges to Esther) 
were compiled. During those same centuries there was 
added to the Scriptures, the writings of the prophets and 
the wisdom or experience books; 

(2) That since narratives of a supernatural and mirac- 
ulous nature must be regarded not as history, but simply 
as myths and legends of the Israelitish tribes, similar in 
character to those of other peoples such as the Greeks 
or Romans, therefore this miracle element must be elim- 
inated from the Biblical literature and along with it much 
of the narratives with which it is interwoven. Accordingly 
for the real starting point of reliable history, for solid 
ground upon which historical criticism can stand, we must 
begin with the picture of the condition of the Hebrew 
tribes presented in the book of Judges. 

This position is taken because, it is declared, no clear 
evidence of either the knowledge or practice of such an 

12 


THE MODERN VIEW OF THE BIBLE 


economy of religion as is presented in the legislation of the 
Pentateuch is anywhere discoverable from Joshua’s day 
up to the Josiah period (over six centuries). This also 
becomes the reason given for assigning the compilation of 
these history Books to the later epoch mentioned. 

The conclusion reached from these premises is that there 
was a gradual rise of the Hebrews from an idolatrous con- 
dition, little better than that of neighboring peoples, to 
the purity of concept found in the prophetic writings 
and to the elaboration of ritual and temple service given in 
the priestly reformation and legislation of the Josiah-Ezra 
period. The authors of this reformation and legislation 
must have woven from some very slender threads of fact 
their whole story of the Tabernacle in the wilderness and 
the rest, for the sake of throwing round the nation’s reli- 
gious development the sanctity of an ancient age by con- 
necting it with the name of the greatest hero in Israelitish 
mythology—Moses. From this there results: 

(3) The theory that an evolutionary process in the 
history and religion of Israel explains how the Old Testa- 
ment literature developed perfectly naturally in the above 
historical manner. 

This evolution, of course, went through various stages. 

13 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


Since we can know very little, according to the canons of 
historical criticism, about the wilderness and Egyptian 
experiences of the Israelite families—these told only in 
the legend-laden Pentateuch—we must begin with the 
Judges period, and pass through the decline and fall of 
the Judges to the rise of the kingdom period, passing on 
again to find, however, that the decline and fall of the 
nation was but the occasion when the religious develop- 
ment reached the climax to which it had been slowly 
evolving side by side with the progress and decay of the 
social order. We are assured that “the ruin of ancient 
Israel was necessary to the birth of the Old Testa- 
ment.” 

This religious history, it is claimed, is the story of an 
upward climb from polytheism with its many altars and 
sanctuaries to monotheism with one central sanctuary, an 
organized priesthood, an established system of sacrifice 
and service, and a large body of law. Further, that while 
certain documents were in existence during these centuries, 
purporting to give the earliest history of the people and 
even carrying back the record to the creation as well as 
containing perhaps a limited number of simple laws, the 
work of compiling, editing, and greatly amplifying them 

14 


THE MODERN VIEW OF THE BIBLE 


was not undertaken until the decline of the kingdom, the 
ensuing exile and subsequent restoration. 

This is stated thus: 

The Mosaic Law, instead of being the force that set 
the peculiar development of Israel in motion, was itself 
the product of that evolution. 

Again, 

Religion was in the world many ages before the He- 
brew nation was born. Our problem is not, How did reli- 
gion arise? but, How did Bible religion arise? When we 
go behind the scenes, and begin to consider the circum- 
stances amid which, and through which, the Bible 
religion came into the world, we are thrown back upon a 
local, definite, concrete situation of great interest. 
Yahweh? (i.e., Jehovah) emerges into distinction 
through a struggle against Baal-worship which was 
derived from the Amorite side of the nation’s ancestry. 


2 The form accepted for the sacred Name by modern scholars who 
consider the usual form “ Jehovah” to be a hybrid combination of the 
four consonants which alone compose the sacred Name, and the 
vowels of the Hebrew word Lord. These vowels were added by the 
Jews who feared, through superstition, to pronounce the Name in 
its original form and substituted the word Lord. Thus it comes that 
in our A. V. with few exceptions Lord is used in the almost seven 
thousand occurrences of the Name. 


15 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


We do not connect him with warfare against Marduk of 
Babylon, or Amon of Egypt, or any other far-away 
deity. It is the Baal-idea that serves as the foil against 


which the Yahweh-idea takes on its distinctive char- — 


acter. 
The Bible religion then, 

took form around the idea of “Yahweh.” We shall 
never know how the worship of Yahweh first became 
current,* any more than we can trace the steps by which 
the Greeks got the worship of Zeus, the Egyptians that 
of Osiris, or the Babylonians that of Marduk. But there 
is no evidence that the worship of Yahweh stood at 
first upon any different footing than did other cults of 
the ancient world ... The Bible religion came into 
existence by the sifting of ancient religious ideas through 
the peculiar national experience of the Hebrews. This 
national experience was unlike that of any other ancient 
people; and it set the Hebrew mind at work in channels 
different from those opened before their contemporaries. 
[It] took form gradually through a series of emergencies, 
or crises, in which the idea of Yahweh passed from stage 


’ This is because the Pentateuch must be considered mythical and 
legendary, and not history, according to the critics. 


16 


THE MODERN VIEW OF THE BIBLE 


to stage. The epochs in this process have left their 
marks in the Bible as clearly as the various geological 


periods have left their traces in the strata of the earth.‘ 
4The foregoing extracts are from Sociological Study of the Bible 
by Louis Wallis (1922 impression), pp. 86, 87, 213. Further quota- 


tions will be given from this book, which is without doubt a remark- 
ably cogent presentation of the views here to be considered. 


17 


CHAPTER II 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 


Before summarizing the results of this revolutionary 
treatment of the Bible and its effect upon our own re- 
ligious faith it may be well to enlarge a little upon its prin- 
cipal features under the following four heads: (1) The 
road traveled by criticism; (2) The method used by 
criticism; (3) The course of Bible history as traced by 
criticism; (4) The origin and making of the Bible accord- 
ing to the latest explanation of criticism. 

Simply a statement of the modernistic view of the Bible 
is given in the following consideration of these features. 
The refutation of that view will occupy us in subsequent 
chapters. 

(1) The road traveled by Criticism. It is thus de 
scribed: 
The view of the Bible taken by our ancestors a few 
generations ago differed greatly from the view toward 
18 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 


which the professional scholarship of the modern world 
has been moving in the last hundred years or so. During 
the Middle Ages, and up to the opening of the nine- 
teenth century, it was the universal belief of the Chris- 
tian church that the Bible was the product of a mechan- 
ical sort of inspiration which left little or nothing of 
essential importance for the human writers of it to do. 
In the same way, it was believed that the religion! of 
the Bible came into the world by a sudden stroke of 
power, in a purely miraculous and quite supernatural 
manner. These views were formed at a time when the 
prevailing ideas about human history, and about the 
earth on which we live, and about the universe at large, 
were much different from the ideas that now reign 
supreme in all well-informed circles. The progress of 
scientific research has gradually and unobtrusively 
changed the vast body of belief that characterized the 
Middle Ages . . . The world in which we live is now 
revealed as a floating speck in a cosmos that staggers 
the greatest intellect. The disclosure of this fact is one 


1 This term is to be understood as comprehending the belief of the 
supernatural, and the practice resulting from its acceptance, em- 
bracing life and experience, doctrines and ordinances, duties and 
ceremonies. It involves, therefore, revelation and related themes. 


19 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


of a series of brilliant scientific discoveries in relation 
to such matters as the geologic formation and age of 
the world, the vast length and evolutionary character 
of human history, man’s place in nature, and other 
subjects of equally vital importance. 

The rising tide of discovery brought with it a slowly 
mounting scientific interest in the Bible and its religion. 
The truth forced itself into the minds of careful inves- 
tigators that the Bible was compiled from other books 
far more ancient than the Scriptures. It became clear 
that the books now standing first in the sacred library 
were among the latest to be composed, while other 
books, which had hitherto been supposed to be of late 
composition, were among the earliest written. The old 
formula, ‘The Law and the Prophets,”’ was reversed, so 
as to read “The Prophets and the Law.” It was dis- 
covered that the prophets were chiefly preachers to 
their own times; that they were but little concerned 
with predicting future events; and that it was largely 
through their efforts that the religion of the Hebrews 
was purified from its original heathen, or pagan, ele- 
ments. 

[This] new view of the Bible is bound up with a new 

20 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 


idea of Hebrew history and a new conception of the 
religious life of Israel. The religious experience of 
Israel is now seen to have been a rise toward a higher 
and purer faith, instead of a decline toward a lower one. 
The new views have largely displaced the older doc- 
trines in all the leading universities and theological 
seminaries. They are held in various forms by different 
scholars; but there is a common basic agreement which 
rapidly grows larger as the fundamental facts are better 
understood by professional minds. 

The interested public, standing outside the academic 
world, is aware that great changes have taken place and 
are even now going on; but the real nature of the new 
scientific view of the Bible, and the evidence upon which 
that view is based are but little understood by the 
laity.2 The public as yet scarcely realizes the extent 
to which the evolutionary principle has been applied 
to the religion of Israel. Professional investigators, 
who have given the most and closest attention to the 
Bible, firmly believe that the idea of God by which 
ancient Israel finally came to be distinguished, is the 
2 The book quoted (Soc. Study of the Bible) evidently intends to do 

its best to furnish the much needed enlightenment. 


21 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


result of a slow process of psychological, or spiritual, 
development, corresponding in some way to stages in 
the national history of the Hebrews. . .. As a rule, 
the modern biblical investigator holds that the religion 
began on the level of what we commonly call “‘pagan- 
ism,” or ‘‘heathenism.”’ He believes that ‘‘ Yahweh,” 
the national deity of Israel, was at first regarded as a 
local god, one of a large number of divinities that 
populated the mind of the ancient world; that the 
people’s thought about him slowly rose to the height 
at which we find it in the great prophets‘and Jesus; 
and that this religious evolution was a process guided 
and controlled by the one true God of the universe who 
was gradually raising men’s thoughts upward through 
the medium of their daily experiences. | 

We shall now quote another sample of ‘‘the belief and 
faith of a devout scholar,” representing ‘‘the attitude of 
by far the large majority of those who have approached 
the problem of the Bible in a scientific way.” It is that of 
George Adam Smith, M. A., D.D., LL.D., Prof. of Hebrew 
and Old Testament Exegesis, Free Church College, Glas- 


gow: 


The god of early Israel was a tribal god; and His rela- 
22 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 


tion to His people is described in the same way as Israel’s 
neighbors describe the relation of their gods to them- 
selves. Israel looked to Jahweh [Yahweh] as the Moab- 
ites looked to Chemosh. . . . They prayed to Him to 
let them see their desire on their enemies, ascribed 
their victories to His love for them, their defeats to His 
anger, and they devoted to Him in slaughter their 
prisoners of war, and the animals they captured from 
their foes; all exactly as their Moabite neighbors are 
reported, in very much the same language, to have done 
to Chemosh, the god of Moab. Moreover, they re- 
garded the power of Jahweh as limited to their own 
territory, and His worship as invalid beyond it (I Sam. 

xxvi. 19 [in the Hebrew and Modern Revised Versions)). 

Though, like all Semites, they felt their duty to one God 

as the supreme Lord of themselves, they did not deny 

the reality of other gods.? 

This relates, it is said, to the historical, objective aspects 
of the Hebrew situation; but the same writer’s theological 
view of the subject is: 

Behind that national deity of Israel, and through the 

3 From Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the Old Test., pp. 
128, 129. 

23 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


obscure and vain imaginations the early nations had of 

him, there was the Character and Will of God Himself, 

using the people’s low thoughts and symbols to express 

Himself to them, lifting them always a little higher, 

and finally making Himself known as He did through 

the prophets as the God of the whole earth, identical 
with righteousness and abounding in mercy.* 

While there are considerations which lend apparent 
support to this reading of Israel’s history, the preponder- 
ance of the evidence is in favor of regarding that history 
as a story of decline instead of origin. After they touched 
bottom, a gradual lifting of the people free from idolatrous 
practices and associations did occur which culminated in 
the great prophets and was finally completed through the 
purging process of the exile. Upon their return from it, 
and in fact ever since, no form of polytheism or idolatry 
has prevailed among the Hebrews. But from the altitude 
of pure religion thus reached in their history, they entered 
upon a second decline which had reached the low ebb of 
Pharisaism and worldliness in the days of John the Baptist, 
and culminated in the Crucifixion of Jesus and the final 
Dispersion of the Jewish people. There accompanied 

4From Biblical World (Aug., 96), pp. 100-101. 

24 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 


this closing phase of their history in Palestine the develop- 
ment of the new and revivifying ministry of Christianity 
which began, indeed, with a remnant of this very people 
who had so greatly departed through successive stages of 
decline from the faith committed to them. 

There is one simple but unvarying process in constant 
evidence, three-fold in character, in Biblical history, con- 
sisting of: (1) perfection at the point of origin; (2) decline 
or decay in the after history thus set in motion; and (3) 
restoration to another, better, and higher plane in the 
final issue of the process. Within the scope of this great 
development, as it affects the universe, or the nations, or 
Israel in particular, or the Church, or individuals, doubt- 
less many minor instances occur of the operation of 
what might almost be termed this Jaw of history. 

The modern scholar then goes on to explain that 
while he: 

does not identify “‘Yahweh” with the true God, he 

believes that the true God was using the idea of Yahweh 

in such a way as to cause that idea more and more to 

take the character of a worthy symbol of religion. This 

theological position, as a matter of fact, puts far less 

strain on the modern intellect than does the older ortho- 
25 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


doxy, and makes it possible for men to remain within 
the church who would otherwise be outside of it. The 
reverent scholar believes that God uses the history of 
Israel, and the history of the world, for an ineffable, 
divine purpose which works out slowly across the ages. 
. .. We take for granted that Bible students “must 
acquire the art of historical construction by which... 
they may . . . reproduce the history of Israel’s religious 
experience, from those early days when Jehovah [Yah- 
weh] was a tribal God who went out to battle against the 
gods of other desert tribes.”’ : 

Now, why the true God should have chosen this particu- 
lar ‘‘idea,”” why He should have selected and used as His 
symbol this Yahweh of Israel in preference to the god 
Chemosh of Moab, or, for that matter, any other national 
god, is an enigma to modern scholarship. Even Well- 
hausen confesses he cannot explain it. Nor have these 
scholars explained how Israel came to have this Yahweh, 
and there seems very little hope that they will ever know. 


The case is stated thus: 


The Bible declares that Israel and Yahweh became 
connected by a covenant, which was made at a specified 
moment of time 2nd ina particular place. In the words 

26 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 


of Hosea: “I am Yahweh thy god from the land of 
Egypt” (Hos. xii.9). In thorough accord with this, we 
are told by the book of Exodus that Israel and Yahweh 
entered into a solemn covenant at Mount Horeb-Sinai, 
just after the Exodus from Egyptian territory. . . “I 
will take you to me for a people; and I will be to youa 
god”’ (Ex. vi. 7). “And thou, Yahweh, became their 
god”’ (2 Sam. vii. 24). Now, the question here is, How 
came the religion of Israel to have this covenant char- 
acter? ...It is to this that Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, 
Jeremiah, and other prophetic writers refer, either ex- 
pressly or by implication. The covenant of the prophets 
fis that] of Sinai, in which Yahweh became the god of 
Israel. If Yahweh thus became the god of Israel at a 
certain time and place, it follows, according to the 
logic of primitive religion, that he must have been 
connected with some other people before the Israelites 
entered into relation with him. The Old Testament 
says that the covenant was made in the Arabian wilder- 
ness, prior to the invasion of Canaan. Whatever this 
transaction was, it lies on the borderland between 
Israel’s prehistoric, nomadic age in the desert and the 
historic period after the settlement; and there is diff- 
27 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


culty in reconstructing its details upon the basis of the 
evidence at our disposal. 

The material referring to this period is of too uncertain 
a character for us to form a definite idea of the situation; 
and the history of the Israelites in the Arabian desert 
must remain shrouded in darkness. We have seen that 
the Hexateuchal [Hexateuch is the critical name given 
to the Pentateuch with Joshua added, which are con- 
sidered as forming one body of literature distinct from 
the remainder of the Old Testament] view of the Israelite 
invasion and settlement of Canaan has much lower 
historical value than the corresponding narratives in 
Judges and Samuel; and this consideration, along with 
many others, leads us to use the Hexateuch with ex- 
treme caution at all points. The outstanding impres- 
sion left upon us, after going over the evidence, is that 
the cult of Yahweh became current among the Israelites 
through their contact with a pastoral clan whose wander- 
ing ground was in the Sinai peninsula. But Old Testa- 
ment scholarship is coming to agreement that we cannot 
envisage the nomadic history of Israel in any clear 
light. 
The conclusion reached is that Yahweh came to the 

28 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 


Israelites through a covenant with another clan, probably 
the Kenites, and that “it is becoming evident that the 
historic fact in the Hexateuch is the importation of a 
desert god and a nomadic morality into the midst of 
settled Amorite civilization” when, of course, Israel 
entered Canaan. Further: 

The work of Moses was rather that of introducing or 
emphasizing the cult of Yahweh than of expounding a 
new system of ethics; and whatever he may have done, 
the vital conditions of Hebrew religious development 
are to be sought in Canaan, and not in the desert. For 
this process, our chief authorities are the books of the 
Judges, Samuel, Kings, and the various prophets; while 
the Hexateuch has only a secondary value.® 
This, then, is criticism’s remarkable answer to the ques- 

tion of the origin of the religion of Israel. It relegates 
the matter to some kindness of an obscure desert tribe 
(the Kenites) to Israel who adopted its god, but how 
Yahweh happened to be the deity of that tribe remains 
a mystery upon which not one ray of light has yet fallen, 
for all that scientific investigation has progressed so 
marvelously. Since the Hexateuchal account of origins 
5 Soc. Study af the Bible, pp. 80-82. 
29 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


must be rejected because it is pervaded by supernatural 
and miraculous elements, and since only explanations 
by natural processes are acceptable to the critical mind, 
there does not seem to be any other tribe than the Kenites 
to select as a source, for the other peoples with whom 
Israel came in contact had gods whose names are known. 
The Kenite deity, not being directly known, or mentioned, 
must have been this Yahweh of Israel. He never would 
have been known to us but for the generous act of Moses 
in adopting and proclaiming this insignificant deity in- 
stead of originating some new god. 

But while this is an account of the road over which 
biblical investigators have thus traveled, we are advised 
to remember ‘‘that they have not yet reached their des- 
tination. This reminder is given by the leading exponents 
of modern biblical research and interpretation. . . . The 
‘partial and imperfect dawn of a new era of interpre- 
tation’”’ is stated to be the general attitude ‘‘of all candid 
biblical investigators whose method and standpoint are 
those of the prevailing school of scientific research. We 
have compared the modern school to travelers who have 
not reached their destination; but another figure may 
also be employed. The scientific view of the Bible is like 

30 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 


a house in process of construction. Most opponents of 
the evolutionary view of Israel’s religion make the tactical 
mistake of assuming that the house is completed; and 
they criticize it on the basis of that assumption.” ® 

Our criticism will not be of the superstructure. That 
it is incomplete we make no question. Our criticism will 
be of the foundation upon which this as yet unfinished 
house is being erected. It would be a long and tedious 
process to demolish piecemeal the extensive shell of a 
building already constructed by the critics. This can be 
left to totter and fall of itself when once the foundation 
is destroyed. The foundation in this case is the evolu- 
tionary view of Israel’s national history which in turn is 
taken to explain the development of its religion, and the 
growth of Bible literature. 

Having marked out the road over which modern Bib- 
lical criticism is traveling, let its method of procedure now 
be stated. 

(2) The method used by Criticism. 

Modern scientific investigation of the Bible, after all, 
is only a special application of methods already em- 
ployed in examining the literature and history ot 
6 Tbid., pp. xxvii. 

31 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


the world’s great nations. Scientific biblical research, 
therefore, is not a thing in a corner. It is answerable 
to the progress of method in the study of all human 
history. The ‘historical method’ took its rise among 
the ancient Greeks, who were the first to achieve eman- 
cipation from the reign of mythology. 

The Greeks had a literature, once considered as credible 
history, which described the early age of heroes, recounted 
divine interventions and communications between gods 
and men, and told of various miracles. ‘This store of 
legend and myth formed a sort of Bible to them. It 
exercised a very great influence upon both their religious 
and literary life. But the time came when their historians 
sought to disengage fact from fiction in this mass of 
mythic story and poem. Thus they established the 
critical method which has been ‘‘taken up by modern 
historical scholars.”’ 

The same is true of ancient Roman history. The Roman 
people, like the Greeks, made their mythology a matter 
of literal and serious belief for many centuries. Though 
the Greeks made an effort to disengage their own history 


from “its mythic envelope,” 


only in modern times and 
within the last few generations has Roman history been 


32 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 


carefully investigated and rewritten. In this work Nie- 
buhr was a foremost leader, reconstructing Roman history 
according to the new method of historical criticism, in 
the application of which he was a pioneer and pathfinder. 

Now, ‘‘the earliest way of treating history [consisted] in 
accepting uncritically all traditions that come down from 
the past, and weaving these traditions together into a 
connected narrative. The mythological part of tradition 
may relate to ‘the gods,’ or it may turn around actual 
historical characters . . . [so] whoever would really know 
human history ... must reckon with the important 
fact of mythology. It was the perception of this principle 
with more or less vividness that led the ancient Greek 
historians to lay the foundations of the critical, historical 
method. The realization of the same truth in a fuller 
degree has been a factor of high importance in the modern 
progress of historical science. Thus, opposition to the 
historical method necessarily carries one back toward 
mythology. . . . The scientific historian, first of all, seeks 
to ascertain ‘facts,’”’ not interpret them, but simply “lay 
bare what may be called ‘the raw material of history.’ 
This fundamental inquiry is dealt with by analyzing the 
evidence that bears upon the situation. . . . The primary 

33 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


work of the scientific investigator of history, then, is to 
draw the distinction between myths and fact. On the 
one side, he accumulates a mass of real or supposed myths; 
and on the other, he gathers a mass of real or supposed 
facts. The myths are not cast into the limbo of mere 
curiosities. They are held aside for later study and inter- 
pretation. As a rule, they are not mere idle tales; and 
they teach positive lessons about history even when they 
are not accepted as literally true.” 

“‘After facts [real or supposed] have been separated 
from their mythic envelope, the demands upon the histo- 
rian become different. There now emerges the leading 
question, What are the connections between the facts? 
How are the facts related to each other? How is history 
to be controlled and interpreted? In other words, after 
the historian has taken his material apart (analysis), he 
is called upon to put it together (synthesis).” 

Now in the development of scientific writing of history 
there have sprung up a number of different departments 
each of which has its specialists; but it must be recognized 
that the work of each (whether political, religious, moral, 
domestic, economic, or legal, etc.) is not independent; 
instead, it stands related to the whole science of history, 

34 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 


which, in fact, is “the biography of human society” and 
“‘must be treated as an ‘organic whole.’” With this must 
be combined the science of sociology which treats of 
the origin and. development of what history records. It 
“‘approaches history from the standpoint of the ‘social 
group,’” that is, it considered history as relating “‘to the 
evolution of organized groups or communities” which 
people form. ‘These may be of only local interest, as in 
the case of the Greeks, whose social mechanism consisted 
of independent clans reaching back to the nomadic period 
and whose development worked out in the construction 
of small ‘‘city states” such as Athens and Sparta, but 
never achieved any real national unity; or they may as- 
sume the importance of development in a national form 
as with the Romans and the Hebrews. 

The idea, then, is that group-development is the only 
basis for the interpretation of history, and that as to all 
phases of life. This principle is applied to the particular 
religious interest which centers in the Bible, and leads to 
the explanation of its origin, development, and interpreta- 
tion from the evolution of the social group known as the 
Hebrew nation.’ This, then, explains the method pursued 


7Extracts from Sociological Study of the Bible, pp. xviii-xxiii, 
pp. 14, 15. 
35 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


by the historical criticism of the Bible. The entire ex- 
planation of its religion and literature is made to turn 
upon the answer to the question, How did the social 
group known as the Hebrew nation originate and develop? 
“This method of approach to the Bible is a logical applica- 
tion of modern results in historical and social science; 
and it opens before us the chapters of an intensely absorb- 
ing story.” This may now be briefly sketched. 

(3) The course of Bible history as defined by Criticism. 
This deals not simply with secular aspects, but with the 
religious elements which so manifestly dominate its course, 
and constitute the preéminent theme of the Bible. The 
course, then, of Bible history is mow outlined and inter- 
preted by scientific historians in the following manner: 

The older view of the Bible and its religion did not 
suppose that the history of the Hebrew people had 
anything to do with shaping, or ‘causing,’ the religious 
ideas peculiar to Israel; and the thought of such a con- 
nection is even yet a novelty to most Bible readers. But 
it should be observed at once that the old view of the 
nature and origin of the Hebrew religion is bound up 
with a view of Hebrew /istory which has been discredited 
in all the foremost institutions of learning. According 

36 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF. MODERNISM 


to the old view, the nation called ‘Israel’ consisted of 
the descendants of a single race, or family. It was 
organized at a single stroke, in the wilderness of Arabia. 
Taking the form of a mighty army, under the general- 
ship of a single commander, the militant nation attacked 
the land of Canaan, drove out the ‘Amorites,’ and then 
divided the entire land by lot among the different clans 
or tribes which constituted the invading army. This 
view is based on the first six books of the Old 
Testament known as the Hexateuch.” . . . This view, 
sociologically, means ‘‘that the group-organization of 
the Hebrews was determined and fixed by law at the 
very beginning of the national history, and was not the 
result of development. ® 

“But modern historical investigation has demonstrated 
that the Hexateuch in its present form is a very late 
product of Hebrew life;® that it was unknown to the 
Hebrews throughout the larger part of their time of 
residence in Palestine; !° and that the conception of the 
8 This explains why Hebrew history is “unlike that of any other 
ancient people,” rather than the sociological reason given later. 

9 This will be enlarged upon shortly in treating of how the Bible 


was made, according to Criticism. See also note !° below. 
10 This is taken for granted because the history of the nation is 


37 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


national history just cited is impossible.” 1! Further, 
the books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings must be ac- 
counted ‘“‘older than the Hexateuch;” and “the story 
which they tell about the origin ” of the Hebrew nation 
[which] departs conspicuously from that of the narratives 


embodied in the first six books of the Old Testament” ?° 


considered a sharp contradiction of what might be expected if the 
Pentateuch was in existence, and had been accepted as the Law of 
God in the manner recounted in its narratives. A very different and 
quite reasonable explanation of this history will be given later. 

11 Simply because it involves the acceptance of the supernatural 
and miraculous, and therefore bears the same character as the myths 
which belong to Greece, Rome, and other nations. 

12 But the question is, Do they tell of origin or decline? This 
critical displacement of the Pentateuch and Joshua, in favor of mak- 
ing an historic beginning with Judges leaves several problems de- 
manding solution, in default of which, after a century of critical 
investigation, we have only the vague speculations of the Critics, like 
the ‘‘Kenite hypothesis” of original source referred to above. (See 
Hastings’ Dict. of the Bible, Ext. vol, pp. 626, 627.) Are not the 
Critics making their own mythology? 

13'This is stated because the history of the Judges-Kings period 
does not show the people living up to the Pentateuchal covenant 
relation, or observing its accompanying legislation, or following its 
ritual and central sanctuary plan. Instead, the people had many 
altars, many sanctuaries, and others than members of the priestly 
house offered sacrifice. From this situation, it is concluded that the 
Hexateuch could not have been in existence at the time. Further, 
that we do not find the history in measurable agreement with the 
legislation of the Pentateuch, until a short period before the exile, 


38 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 


must be used as the historical starting point. ‘‘ Accord- 
ing to these older documents [Judges-Kings], the land of 
Canaan was invaded, not by a ‘nation’ organized as a 
grand army under one general, but by a number of inde- 
pendent clans which had no common organization. These 
clans coming in from the desert, merely succeeded in 
planting themselves here and there in the highlands of 
Judah, Ephraim, and Gilead. They did not drive out or 
annihilate the Amorites; but the previous inhabitants 
remained in possession of a long list of walled cities, most 
of which were in the lowlands. The Hebrew nation, as 
known to history, arose at the point of coalescence between 
the incoming Israelite clans and the Amorite city-states 


and only in final form after it. Therefore, it must have been com- 
piled during this late period as an instrument for use in accomplish- 
ing religious reformation and establishing definite institutions of 
priestly place and service with one central and only valid sanctuary. 
In the compiling, this body of law and literature was combined with 
the mythology found in current documents of early tradition and 
the few general laws also embodied in them so that the whole collec- 
tion might be hallowed by the sanctity and supernatural character 
attached to the ancient mythic age of heroes, so sacred and dear to 
any ancient people. This does not mean to deny that Abram, Moses, 
and others were not historic personages, but the mere admission of 
their having lived becomes about the only needle of fact in this hay- 
stack of fiction. 


39 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


already established in Canaan. ‘The Amorite cities re- 
mained for a long time independent (throughout the 
period of the Judges and reign of King Saul); but under 
the House of David, the earlier inhabitants became 
assimilated with the Israelite monarchy, and lost their 
racial identity. During the long period between the 
original invasion and the great Babylonian captivity, the 
Hebrew people and their kings did not observe the law 
of the national constitution recorded in the Hexateuch; 14 
and this law was finally brought forward in its completed 
form, and adopted after the Captivity, by the ‘Jews,’ a 
remnant of the old Hebrew people. This general view . . . 
is a commonplace to the scholar who is in possession of 
the results of scientific investigation of the Bible.” 

Now the historico-sociological viewpoint and interpre- 
tation is that consequent upon this invasion by a nomadic 
people and their contact with the settled, city-dwelling 
and so-called civilized peoples inhabiting Canaan, “a 
great struggle arose between the standpoints of” these 
groups finally resulting through fusion ‘‘in the develop- 
ment of the Hebrew nation.” 

But the conflict of different social and religious ideas 


4 According to the Critics, it was not yet in existence. 


40 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 


continued, and ‘“‘in the long run, the two sides of the 
struggle came to be symbolized by the terms ‘Yahweh’ 
and ‘Baal,’ which indicate the gods of the races that com- 
bined in the national group. By one and the same process, 
the national deity Yahweh became identified with warfare 
against ‘other gods’ and warfare against ‘injustice.’”’ 
The conflict between the local Baal worship, derived from 
the Amorites, and that of Yahweh, the national deity, 
along with which was associated a different social mechan- 
ism, resulted in bringing forward the great prophets who, 
like reformers of their day, preached against polytheism 
and various forms of social abuses and injustice, connected 
in their minds with the Baal-system of Amorite origin, 
so that the movement thus commenced and carried into 
post-exilic times accomplished the purification of the 
Hebrew religion, giving to it its final, spiritual, universal, 
and exalted form which the prophetical books chiefly set 
forth in a way “‘that has pierced through the ages and 
illuminated the history of the world.” 

This unique development is considered to be due to the 
religious element which persistently characterized the 
conflict of different social standpoints engendered by 


nomadic Israel’s invasion of settled and civilized Canaan. 
41 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


It is true that similar invasions by primitive peoples had 
taken place in Babylonia and Egypt, but no similar con- 
flict had ensued, for these conquering nomads had found 
an already established national unity, social and religious, 
to which they had to accommodate themselves. 

But in Canaan nothing like this was found by Israel; 
instead of unity in government and religion there were 
independent city-states or provincial bodies, each wor- 
shipping its own god, or Baal. In the conflict of Canaan’s 
different social standpoint with that of nomadic Israel, 
Hebrew development took place, producing in its course 
national unity and organization with Yahweh, who at 
first was only the tribal god of the invaders, now become 
a national deity. 

Thus social and religious elements were combined on 
both sides of the struggle, and out of its throes, after a 
duration of centuries, there emerged the result described 
above. This struggle has been staged nowhere else. It 
has been acted out only in Hebrew history. Because of 
this distinctive and peculiar combination of elements, 
social and religious, the Hebrew-group evolution is con- 
sidered to be ‘‘unlike that of any other ancient people.” 

It may be necessary for the sake of clearness further to 

42 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 


define what is meant by this conflict of differing social 
and religious elements. The ideas and usages of all 
migratory, unsettled races, such as Israel was at first, 
are of a different form from those of settled civilized 
peoples such as the Amorites. With the former, social 
consciousness put brotherhood foremost—the good treat- 
ment of the individual members of clan or tribe—and 
manhood was held at par value. With the latter, man- 
hood was held at a discount; the common man was looked 
upon with scant respect. Most of the inhabitants in 
settled Oriental countries were in the toils of some kind 
of slavery, while a small, upper class used all the machinery 
of government and religion to tighten their grip upon the 
masses still more firmly. Abuse of individual right, and 
much injustice prevailed with a small privileged class 
always in the ascendant. 

The reverse is true of the nomadic social and economic 
standpoint, for it maintained a much higher standard of 
individual right and a more impartial administration of 
justice. The religious element of the Amorite civilization 
reflected its social viewpoint. In it the leading men of 
the upper social class were called “‘baals” and their gods 
were “‘Baals” to whom the people conceded the same 

43 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


thought, place, and action as that which they attributed 
to their own human lords or owners. 

Nomadic Israel, on the contrary, had one tribal god. 
He was interjected abruptly among the Amorite Baals 
on Israel’s invasion of Canaan along with the social cus- 
toms and laws of nomads, and so was precipitated the 
conflict of different religious and social elements. This 
resulted in generating “a new ‘variety’ of religion. The 
contact with the cult of civilization produced a ‘cross- 
fertilization of culture’ which led to the birth of a unique 
religion. A new body of spiritual thought was born which 
avoided the religious evils of civilization and nomadism, 
and combined their virtues.” 1 

According to Criticism, this is a description of the course 
of Hebrew history along with the explanation of the birth 
and development of Bible religion. 

4. The origin and making of the Bible as now explained 
by Criticism. From the preceding sections the reader will 
already have gleaned something of what may be expected 
under this heading. 

As to the origin of the Bible religion, we are told that 


18 Quotations and extracts from Sociological Study of the Bible, 
pp. xxiv-xxx, 95, 135-137, 176. 


bt 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 


this must be sought in the conflict of diverse forces as just 
described. It is “not the outcome of one special thread 
of influence, but the product of many tendencies and cir- 
cumstances working together.” This process has been 
briefly described in the outline of the course of Hebrew 
history, as now defined by Criticism. It began with the 
shock occasioned by the meeting of the opposing stand- 
points represented by nomadism and civilization, com- 
plicated by a keen religious competition between the 
multitudinous Baal-worship of the Amorite civilization 
and the Yahweh-worship, observed in common by all the 
tribes of Israel, which they brought out with them from 
the wilderness. 

The contact of these alien social-religious groups pro- 
duced the conditions of the Judges-period. During it 
there was a constant alternation of victory and defeat for 
the invading nomads, who assimilated in the process cer- 
tain forms of the Baal-worship while still giving their own 
Yahweh first place. The conflict continued even during 
Saul’s reign, but a fusion of these elements took place 
under David’s conquest, and this new national develop- 
ment naturally gave the god of the conquering Israelites 
a great new prestige which was celebrated in the building 

45 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


of his great temple by Solomon. Nevertheless the Amor- 
ite-Baal influences remained in the midst of the Hebrew 
nation. 

Toward the close of Solomon’s reign and after the dis- 
ruption, these influences burst again into prominence, 
especially acquiring prominence in the northern kingdom. 
The result was really the vogue of a kind of pantheon of 
gods, with Yahweh as the chief divinity. A system of 
polytheism prevailed, and in the new conflict with this, 
the conflict of opposing social law and custom, which had 
been much suppressed during the reign of David and 
Solomon again came to the forefront. In Ahab’s reign, 
this condition reached a crisis when Elijah with unex- 
ampled boldness attacked Baal-worship and social in- 
justice,’® and demanded that the supremacy of Yahweh 
be fully recognized. 

This reformation did not prove permanent, however, 
the old conditions returned and even grew worse as they 


16 Against all this Samuel had warned when a king was first de- 
manded. In short a throne meant the injection of Amorite influences 
and conditions into Israel’s nomadic social structure. History shows 
this developed, and became the root of the disruption in Rehoboam’s 
day. This leaven of the things of Baal continued to work and spread. 
A weak voice now and again was raised against it, but Elijah’s thun- 
der brought revolution 


46 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 


had a habit of doing in the ancient imperialistic form of 
civilization. 

But ancestral influences kept the tradition of the no- 
madic social forms of law and custom, with their greater 
measure of practical righteousness, justice, and brother- 
hood, alive among the common people of the kingdoms, 
oppressed though they were, and impoverished by des- 
potic methods and exactions to satisfy the extravagant 
luxury of the Court and of the small upper social class 
who also reveled in Baal-worship. Yahweh, on the other 
hand, was always identified with the ancestral social 
standpoint by both the oppressor and the oppressed. 
There was a constant alternation of supremacy between 
the conflicting standpoints: now Amorite-Baalistic in- 
fluences dominated, then the ancestral Israelite influences 
rose to the top. This antithesis receives recurring and 
increasing emphasis in the history of the Kings. 

What thus long smouldered, or expressed itself in con- 
vulsive effort, as in the case of Elijah, broke out into a 
great flame of protest, expostulation, and sound teaching 
with the rise of the literary or writing prophets, beginning 
with Amos and Hosea. The work thus begun, was fol- 
lowed up and developed by successive prophets, and it 

47 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


crystallized religious thought, emphasized righteousness, 
individual and national, justice and brotherhood. The 
original idea of Yahweh expanded. From the one god of a 
group of tribes he grew to be a universal Deity, and the 
figure of the one true God emerged out of this age-long 
struggle in Canaan. As already told, He was at work all 
the time behind the scenes in this drama. By means of 
the tribal, and later the national deity of Israel, God was 
preparing the way, finally to reveal Himself fully as “the 
God of the whole earth, identical with righteousness and 
abounding in mercy.” 

All this means that the books of the Nee must be 
taken as the great foundation strata of Bible religion and 
literature. The Hexateuch did not exist, nor Judges 
through Kings at the commencement of the period of the 
literary prophets, only separate documents, containing 
some early traditions, a few simple, primary laws and 
some records of history were in existence, in a scattered 
form, for they were not combined until later into a body 
of literature. The movement to collect and compile them 
took rise during the era of the prophets, whose work gave 
stimulus to it. Their success in stressing and expanding 


See Dp. 21,22. 


48 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 


the idea of Yahweh gave substance to the idea of institut- 
ing a one only valid and central sanctuary with an author- 
ized priesthood and ritual. Thus Deuteronomy ® was 
written just before Josiah’s reign, hidden in the temple, 
and suddenly “‘discovered” to be used as its compiler 
originally intended, as the lever to inaugurate a religious 
reformation conforming to the standpoint of the prophets. 
Deuteronomy thus set in motion a great literary develop- 
ment, extending through several centuries during which 
the scattered documents and records which gave Israel’s 
original mythology, traditions and history, were collected, 
sifted, edited and pieced together, sometimes very skill- 
fully, again rather loosely, in the books that we name the 
Pentateuch, Joshua, and Judges through Kings. 

This whole literary development, although the work 
of many hands and minds is characterized by the general 
purpose of selecting such things as would be useful in 
strengthening and embellishing the framework constructed 
by the Prophetic-Deuteronomic-Priestly schools which 
began to be formed in the days of the first literary prophetz 
—Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah.” 


18 At least, most of what now constitutes that book. 
19 “The book of Genesis, being written at a late epoch, reflects the 


49 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


Everything thus was ordered to contribute to the ad- 
vancement of the central idea—the absolute supremacy, 
unique glory and perfect righteousness of Yahweh as 
against all the Baals and the social customs connected 
with them. In the recognition that allegiance to Yahweh 
was the paramount issue, lay the key to all blessing, 
individual, national, universal. The adversities and dis- 
asters of the national history, culminating in the captiv- 
ities, were also made to serve this cause. ‘These were 
selected for special emphasis by Jeremiah. During the 
exile and after, this great religious movement continued, 
gaining rather than slowing up under exilic conditions, so 
that in the Ezra-Nehemiah period it reached its final 
form, particularly as to laws and ritual. In brief, this 
was the process of the establishment of monotheism as 
true religion in contrast with polytheism. 

Concurrently, a world-wide perspective developed, in 
which the Yahweh of tribal Israel who had previously 


struggle of the prophets against the practices and ideas of their 
times.” Such instances as that nomadic Abraham is the friend of 
Yahweh, and the Amorites pronounced wicked; that Abel the no- 
madic shepherd is acceptable to Yahweh, and Cain the settled worker 
of the soil is rejected, that Yahweh is presented as opposed to city- 
building and city-dwelling are some of the thiugs presented as 
proof! 


50 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 


become the national god of the Hebrew nation, became 
the Redeemer of Mankind, the one only true and living 
God. This is the grand climax to the social-religious con- 
flict staged in the land of Canaan, carried on between the 
opposing standpoints of invading Israel and the indig- 
enous Amorites. 

Thus the great pivot upon which the making of Scrip- 
ture turns—the center from which it evolves like an 
ascending and expanding spiral of religious thought of 
ever increasing spirituality and breadth of vision—is 
condemnation of the Hebrews for adopting Amorite law and 
morals instead of remaining true to the ancestral tribal god, 
Yahweh, and the code of ethics associated with him by reason 
of their nomadic origin. 

This completes our brief general sketch of the origin 
and making of the Bible and its religion as now understood 
and taught by the critics. 

Additional details may help to elucidate their scheme 
further and prove not uninteresting in themselves. Gen- 
erally speaking, the critics look at the books beginning 
with Genesis and on through Kings as composed of various 
documents which were brought together and gradually 
added to by a school of writers during the seventh to the 

51 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


fifth centuries B.c. Only toward the end of this period did 
this body of literature receive its present form practically. 
The labors of these critics have been devoted to distin- 
guishing, analyzing, and separating these documents 
into their originals, which they claim to be able to do by 
reason of certain literary forms, phrases, special words 
and distinctive lines of thought or special viewpoints 
peculiar to each of them. They believe that each of these 
originals can be chronologically located by sifting out 
parallelisms between these features peculiar to it and the 
actual history of the Hebrew people. 

Chronologically speaking these documents and the 
compositions added to them are then placed in the follow- 
ing order: 

1. Two sets of narratives, called Elohistic and Yahweh- 
istic because they make use in large measure of the names 
“Elohim” and ‘‘Yahweh” [Jehovah], respectively are 
separated out in which it is claimed that there exist marked 
divergences and contradictions in their treatment of the 
same events. The editors distributed these double ac- 
counts throughout our Hexateuch, in some cases dove- 
tailing passages to each together in such fashion that 
the critics have found it necessary in certain places actually 

52 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 


to split verses, assigning part to one source and part to 
another. Both these sets of duplicated narrative began 
with the myths of creation as found in Genesis and car- 
ried the story into the Judges period. These narratives 
did not supply any of the material embraced in what we 
know as Leviticus and Deuteronomy, nor parts of Num- 
bers, and parts of the Tabernacle and Law sections of 
Exodus. Leviticus and Deuteronomy and these parts of 
Numbers and Exodus were produced at a much later 
date. 

2. There were certain other books of record, probably 
contemporaneous to some extent with the above men- 
tioned documents.”° 

3. The book found in the temple by Hilkiah in Josiah’s 
reign. This is supposed to have comprised most of the 
present book of Deuteronomy. 

For about one hundred years previous to its discovery 
several of the prophets—Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah— 
had been delivering their messages. This prepared the 
way for the production of the “Hilkiah book.” “The 
majority of the critics believe this book of the law to have 


20 See Num. xxi. 14, 15,; Josh. x. 12, 13; 2 Sam. i. 18-27; I Kings 
xiv. 19, 29. 


53 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


been the result of a pious fraud promulgated by Hilkiah 
and Shaphan with the intention of deceiving Josiah into 
the belief that the reforms which they desired were the 
express command of God revealed to Moses.” #4 

It is then supposed that this book Hilkiah found was 
used as a nucleus by a school of writers, now called Deu- 
teronomistic. In conjunction with the prophets who 
arose after its discovery, Jeremiah in particular, they 
expanded it into our present Deuteronomy. This is 


considered demonstrated by the fact that Baal-worship 
derived from the Amorites is constantly referred to in it.”” 


“The worship of the Baals is equated, or identified, with 
everything that the prophets abhor.” 

To this same school of writers, for their labors extended 
Over many years, is attributed the final compilation of 
the present books of Judges, Samuel and Kings. They 
took the old records and stories of past history (Elohistic, 
Yahwehistic, etc.) which were available, and added to 
them the special emphasis which is laid by them in their 
present form upon the evils of Amorite Baal-worship, 
customs and morals. This is the process by which these 


21 Hastings’ Dict. of the Bible, “ Hexateuch,’’ p. 368. 
22 vii. 1-5; xii. 2-4; xii. 30; xx. 16-18; xxxi. 16. 
54 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 


books become such a strong witness to the use of anti- 
Baal propaganda to enforce the cult of Yahweh. 

This led the way to a combination of the Elohist and 
Yahwehist documents, and the various laws and cere- 
monies, after their codification, which were found needful 
in developing the religious reformation set in motion by 
the famous “ Hilkiah book.”’ The destruction of Jerusalem 
and the temple, as soon as it occurred, made the writing 
down of these priestly practices still more essential and 
it was taken in hand during the exile. Ezekiel is credited 
with the first step in this direction, and the result was 
his ideal plan and constitution for the service of the temple 
when restored. He was a priest, and other priests followed 
in his steps. Thus all the older practices and related laws 
were written down, as well as, doubtless, additions made 
during a period which reached into post-exilic days; the 
final result being what critics call the Priestly Code. 
Leviticus is entirely made up of this material, and other 
parts of it are found distributed throughout the Hexateuch. 

To recapitulate: The order that we have now reached is: 
the Elohist document, the Yahweh document, certain 
books of record, the Hilkiah book, then Deuteronomy 
and the Judges-Kings series, the writings of the prophets 

55 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


before and during the exile, and the production of the 
Priestly Code bringing us to post-exilic time. 

Now the next step was the combination of E (Elohistic), 
Y (Yahwehistic), D (Deutoronomistic), and P (Priestly), 
probably in the Ezra-Nehemiah period, thus finally pro- 
ducing the Hexateuch (Genesis-Joshua) as we now pos- 
sess it. 

Ezra and Nehemiah, 1 and 2 Chronicles, were put into 
finished form during the fourth century B.c. 

Daniel is placed in the second century B.c. 

As to the other books, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, etc., 
little is known concerning them, except that they were 
in all probability incorporated in the body of accepted 
sacred literature during the post-exilic period. 

The problem of the composition of the Hexateuch is 
aptly described by one of the critics, who makes the 
principle underlying it applicable to all Scripture. He 
Says: 

Let us suppose a problem of this kind: Given a patch 
work quilt, explain the character of the original piece 
out of which the bits of stuff composing the quilt were 
cut. First, we notice that, however well the colors may 
blend, however nice and complete the whole may look, 

56 


PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MODERNISM 


many of the adjoining pieces do not actually agree in 
material, texture, pattern, color, or the like. Ergo, 
they have been made up out of very different pieces 
of stuff. So far, we have only proved what may turn 
out to be ...a conglomeration of fragments. But 
suppose that we further discover that many of the bits, 
though now separated, are like one another in material, 
texture, etc., we may conjecture that these may have 
been cut out of one piece. But we shall prove this 
beyond reasonable doubt if we find that several bits 
when unpieced fit together, so that the pattern of one 
is continued in the other; and, moreover, if all of like 
character are sorted out they form, say, four groups, 
each of which was evidently once a single piece of stuff, 
though parts of each are found missing, because, no 
doubt, they have not been required to make the whole. 
But we make the analogy with the Hexateuch even 
closer, if we further suppose that in certain parts of the 
quilt the bits belonging to, say, two of these groups 
are so combined as to form a subsidiary pattern within 
the larger pattern of the whole quilt, and had evidently 
been sewn together before being connected with the 
other parts of the quilt; and we may make it even closer 
57 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


still, if we suppose that, besides the more important 
bits of stuff, smaller embellishments, borderings, and 
the like had been added so as to improve the general 
effect of the whole.” 

23 Hastings’ Dict. of the Bible, “ Hexateuch,”’ p. 365. 


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CHAPTER III 


EFFECTS OF MODERNISM 


The effects upon our own faith of the results reached by 
the critics and just described at some length may be now 
considered. 

This view of the Bible produces the following effects: 
(1) It asks us to ignore the Bible’s distinctive character 
and manifest difference, and make the history of Greece 
and Rome our standard in the study and interpretation 
of Bible history. (2) It asks us to admit that most of 
the Pentateuch and Joshua is of no higher order than 
the mythological literature of the Greeks and Romans—a 
little fact emmeshed in much fiction, of which the Homeric 
epics and such stories as that of the two sons of Mars, the 
war-god, named Romulus and Remus, both born of a 
virgin, are notable examples. (An impartial comparative 
study certainly shows the fallacy of this method.) (3) 
Since so “‘many of the narratives in the earliest history 
of Rome betray their fabulous nature by the contradictions 
and impossibilities they involve” (Niebuhr), and giving 

59 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


them credence can only result in ‘‘the prostration of the 
understanding and judgment” (idem), it asks us to look 
upon the Pentateuchal early history of Israel in the same 
way, giving no more credence to its narratives of the 
supernatural and miraculous. This puts a veto on the 
use of the Pentateuch, as the terminus a quo for the study 
of the Hebrew social group and its development. For 
that, we must go to Judges, for the conditions prevailing in 
its day are recorded there, it tells us, with a good measure 
of historic certainty. (4) It asks us to discard, as illegit- 
imate, all idea that the inspiration and revelation con- 
stantly claimed by the Bible for itself throughout, does 
really mark it off as eminently different from any other 
body of literature. (5) Since the Old Testament was 
treated by the early Christians as unimpeachable history, 
its impeachment of that history poisons and devitalizes 
the whole body of the New Testament teaching for us, 
thus sapping the foundations of Christianity. (6) It insists 
upon our acceptance of the Christ-dishonoring doctrine 
of the Kenosis, vitally maiming our Lord’s unique and 
perfect personality, making Him, as far as His knowledge 
is concerned, nothing more than the product of His time. 
The modified view may be taken that He accommodated 
60 


EFFECTS OF MODERNISM 


Himself to His time. But this would then mean giving 
consent by silence to ignorance, superstition, deception, 
speaking no word to dispel such clouds and mists so that 
the truth might shine out clearly, though He knew all 
the time that the Old Testament records He used and 
preached from were mythical in character and authorship. 
In that case the critics have outdone Him in kindness to 
their deluded fellowmen; they have exceeded the Lord 
Himself in honesty and in fearless presentation of facts 
which He kept hidden under the cloak of His gracious 
accomodation to His times, and so permitted the world 
to remain under delusion concerning them for over eighteen 
hundred years! 

This question of the effects upon our own faith which 
the acceptance of this view of the Bible would entail is of 
such supreme importance that it will be well to state them 
over again somewhat differently. | 

1. Since its acceptance would revolutionize the whole 
order and meaning of Biblical history, such radical con- 
sequences may well raise a presumption against it in the 
mind of the reverent student and cause him to hesitate and 
seriously question its truthfulness. 

2. Its acceptance would affect disastrously in a far- 

61 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


reaching way the authenticity of the Bible, which would 
thus cease to be authoritative, or to be what is claimed 
for it by its writers; or to be considered in many cases in 
accordance with facts, or to be true to its professed origin 
and authorship. 

3. Facing the question of its acceptance produces in 
us a feeling that we are dealing with a deceptive set of docu- 
ments, originally imposed upon the people for a ‘‘pious”’ 
purpose, in the same class with those devices which priest- 
craft in every nation and of every age has foisted upon 
mankind. In other words, its compilers seem to be por- 
trayed as too much like religious zealots who did not scruple 
to use guile, prevarication, partiality, in the promotion 
of their one central idea, namely, a determined purpose to 
exalt an insignificant tribal god whose origin is as obscure 
as that of any other god of the ancient world into lord- 
ship over the whole earth. He is made to become in the 
end an all-pervading personality. Why choose him any 
more than a hundred others? Why should a god and a 
people who were by comparison such insignificant factors 
in the ancient world succeed in climbing to a place of such 
universal and abiding importance? 


4. Its acceptance, carried to its logical end, would 
62 | 


EFFECTS OF MODERNISM 


degrade the Book (for it must stand or fall as a unit, every 
part of it being skillfully interlocked in testimony, theme, 
and narrative) to the level of the religious mythological 
literature of pagan peoples. We would have to believe that 
whole speeches, codes of law, and various narratives are 
put by its writers into the mouths of their great hero 
Moses and their tribal god, either Elohim or Yahweh 
by name, which they knew were never uttered by them. 

5. Its acceptance would constitute a peremptory de- 
mand upon us for the rejection of inspiration and revela- 
tion as set forth in what is now called the old or tradi- 
tional views. If Criticism is correct, these cannot longer 
be entertained. 

6. At the same time, its acceptance demands acquies- 
cence in what defies logical explanation, acquiescence in 
a mystery which taxes human reason more than does any 
acquiescence in the supernatural and miraculous. It 
asks us to believe that those who countenanced and helped 
forward the “pious” fraud described above on the people 
of the Old Testament, and thereby confessed to an utter 
lack of common honesty, to say the least, were neverthe- 
less possessed of high enough spiritual culture to evolve 
those lofty moral sentiments and express those sublime 

63 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


spiritual truths, which, it is admitted, are characteristic 
of so much of the Bible, making it decidedly superior to 
any other body of literature, no matter when or by whom 
humanly produced. 

7. Its acceptance requires us to believe that the critics 
possess unparalleled literary keenness and an acumen, 
which, indeed, must be accounted stupendous. In fact, 
could anything short of the supernatural account for 
their mysterious, uncanny skill in dismantling documents? 
In recent times writers have collaborated, and yet critical 
inspection of their joint work, aided by close acquaintance 
with the authors themselves, has failed to assign to each 
his part in the composite production with anything like 
accuracy. 

But the Critics of Scripture go at their task with neither 
doubts nor qualms. They even split up the text of a 
document into such minute fractions that a single word is 
sometimes assigned to another source than that of the 
rest of the verse. Resort must be had to that which their 
highly developed historical sense requires them to discard 
—the supernatural and miraculous—as wellnigh the only 
adequate explanation of this extraordinary ability (?) 
to analyze, dissect, sift, and piece together the different 

64 


EFFECTS OF MODERNISM 


documents imbedded in so complex a mass of literature 
as the Old Testament must be, according to their views. 
It is really too much to ask of anyone not already com- 
mitted to it as a corollary of their peculiar view of the 
Bible. 

8. Its acceptance renders the Old Testament of very 
doubtful spiritual worth and meaning. Indeed, it seems 
hardly reasonable to expect the Old Testament on this 
view to retain much of this element—little more, perhaps, 
than the //zad and the Odyssey, or the writings of Herod- 
otus, in fact, the Hexateuch is represented as bearing a 
similar relation to the life of the Hebrews as do those 
productions to the life of the Greeks.! 

9. Its acceptance would discredit the New Testament 
view of the Old Testament Scriptures, and force us to 
admit that it makes the New Testament way of using 
them appear foolish and childish. The sayings of Christ 
Himself would be no exception. 


1 Such allusions are of frequent occurrence in critical comments. 
On the subject of the course of history in the book of Joshua, it is 
remarked: ‘An instructive parellel to Joshua is found in the Greek 
legends of the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnesus (Return of the 
Heracleide), partition of the land by lot, etc.” Enc. Biblica, vol. ii, 
2608. 


65 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


10. It so completely disintegrates the books of Bible 
history that the attempt to re-arrange them in accordance 
with the critical scheme, or perhaps it should rather be 
said to take the multiplicity of documents of which they 
are made up, as now detected and separated apart by 
Criticism, and throw them into some new arrangement, 
can result only in a meaningless, disconnected, spiritually 
impoverished collection. About all that could be done 
is to spread them out as is done with an ancient “find”’ of 
clay tablets or papyri, dug up in Babylonia or Egypt. 
The historical, chronological view of the critics com- 
pletely breaks up all unity of structure and theme, making 
anything like a synthesis from the results of their work 
quite impossible. Thus is revealed the barrenness that 
would follow the acceptance of their labors, which throws 
the Bible student back upon the so-called traditional view 
as the only reasonable and consistent arrangement. 

11. The question of accepting this new view of the 
Bible forces upon us this direct issue: Shall we side with 
the critics in opposition to the testimony given in the New 
Testament by the Apostles, and even by the Lord Jesus 
Himself? Were they so circumscribed by the ignorance 
of the age in which they lived that they did not know the 

66 


EFFECTS OF MODERNISM 


Scriptures of their people as well as the critics do? Was 
Jesus? To accept Modern Criticism and its legitimate re- 
sults means thus that both Old and New Testaments are 
turned into nothing more than any other book, and possess 
an authority in no way above that of the literature of any 
other religion. Even admitting that it evidences a degree 
higher development now when compared with the religious 
literature of other peoples, in view of what the critics say 
may we not expect something in the future of a still 
higher order? In fact it is surmised that we will have a 
new Bible after a while. This Bible which we now have, 
is to be accorded only provisional acceptance. 

12. Its acceptance requires us to countenance an ab- 
surdity. According to the critics, the main reliable early 
history of the Hebrew nation—the Judges-Kings series of 
books—presents nothing like conformity to such a system 
of history, law and ceremony as is laid down in the Penta- 
teuch, but records much which is contrary to it. On the 
ground of this silence, we are asked to conclude that the 
Pentateuch did not exist during all that period covered 
by the Judges-Kings series of books; that at best only 
fragments of it were then to be found in brief, stray 
documents, and these were only gathered together 

67 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


into two main documents in perhaps the ninth cen- 
tury B.C. 

It is admitted that there probably existed some simple 
code of law and ceremony, such as was suitable for the 
ordering of the social and religious life of a nomadic 
people, like Israel at that time, and that this afterward 
was incorporated in the Pentateuch. But the first con- 
siderable real body of written law is said to have been 
brought forth and authoritatively accepted in Josiah’s 
day and imposed upon the nation in connection with a 
startling revolution. 

It is taken for granted, in the re-ordering of the history 
according to the critics, that the nation knew nothing of 
the existence of this law and its requirements until Hil- 
kiah and Shaphan produced their “‘find”; but it was 
accepted immediately by king, court, and elders of the 
nation as the revealed law of Jehovah. This “find” is 
now supposed to constitute the major part of Deuter- 
onomy. 

Can this extraordinary adoption and installation of a 
national Constitution be explained except as a miracle? 
If it were represented to be an old document, recognized 
when thus restored, and therefore submitted to as of 

68 


EFFECTS OF MODERNISM 


known ancient genuineness and authority, all would have 
been plain and simple. But that this mew book, written 
only a short time before Josiah and hidden in the temple, 
should be accorded immediate acceptance, and produce 
such nationwide results, is impossible of reasonable 
human explanation either from history or from analogy. 
Indeed, it must remain insoluble, apart from the presence 
of a supernatural and miraculous element. But this, of 
course, the critics rule out. 

After careful consideration, therefore, the historical 
sense must reject this fundamental proposition of the 
critics. If we identify this “find” as nothing less than the 
restoration of the lost Pentateuch written by Moses—and 
the contrary cannot be proved—then their position is 
untenable. The very title used in describing this book 
would lead one to think that the Pentateuch was meant. 
The objection sometimes raised that it could not be read 
at one sitting is not valid, for how long Shaphan took to 
read it is not stated. Days must have elapsed before its 
examination was complete, either when first presented to 
the king, or later when made known to the elders of Judah 
and Jerusalem. 

Some general observations. If the supernatural and mi- 

69 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


raculous are for the moment eliminated from consideration, 
and the personages, circumstances, local color and mun- 
dane events of the Bible record are examined carefully, 
sufficient evidence from external sources will be found 
to prove the correctness of these records. Archeological 
discoveries have provided this outside evidence. It is 
rather striking to note that in the standard reference works 
of the Modern Critical School, whose influence has become 
so widespread, these results of exploration are not set 
forth in any connected form or treated in their relation 
to the Bible record. They would really prove too much 
to be comfortable for their theories. 

The foundation of the whole critical structure is con- 
tained in the general proposition that God reveals Him- 
self only through the medium of human history which is 
evolutionary in character. Therefore, only as we can lay 
bare the reliable history of Israel, for example, can we 
learn the steps of His self-disclosure. That means He 
must work from behind and through idolatry, using the 
low thoughts and symbols which appeal to primitive 
people, and the slow development of these to a higher 
plane, as the instruments or means of imparting knowledge 
concerning Himself—His character, will, ways and pur- 

70 


EFFECTS OF MODERNISM 


poses. Israel, we are told, began on a pagan plane, and 
their god Yahweh (Jehovah) was nothing more at that 
time than an idol-god like those of other ancient peoples. 
With his worship they combined, especially when in 
Canaan, the Baal-worship; which must mean that the 
true God then used this forbidding combination to further 
the revelation of Himself! 

God thus identified Himself with idolatry. How could 
He do otherwise? For supernatural or miraculous dis- 
closures of Himself, He does not, perhaps cannot, give; 
certainly He should not, according to the critics, for to do 
so would constitute a violent infringement of the sovereign 
historical sense. He is restricted in the nature of the case 
according to the critics, to the use of the creature’s own 
ideas and customs as a means of revelation of Himself. 

Now, see in what kind of pantheon He thus takes His 
place! Idolatry prevailed in Israel as in all the Gentile 
nations. To this the only certain historical records which 
criticism allows us to use, bear witness. Paul tells us 
that the things sacrificed to idols were sacrificed to demons 
(I Cor. x. 20, 21; Acts, xvii. 22; ? see also Deut. xxxii. 17; 


2In the first passage here demons should be read for devils, as 
given by the American Revision, the R. V. margin, and other new 


71 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


Ps. cvi. 35-37). In other words, idolatry rested back on 
a strange and awful power of spiritual wickedness. Moral 
depravity prevailed in connection with it, and no system 
of spiritual ethics can be found associated with these 
conditions; all was sensual. But the true God, driven 
to it, to obtain a means of revealing Himself, takes His 
place in such a pantheon of demon influence, in order 
finally to work out for men a righteous and holy concep- 
tion of Himself. He chose to identify Himself with the 
idol-god Yahweh.’ This is the logical issue of Criticism’s 
view of the Old Testament. 

If it be asked: Was not this result achieved rather by 
the lofty and spiritual ministry of the great prophets? 
we answer: Admitted. But do not these prophets without 
qualification or distinction ascribe all that they thus 


translations. In the passage from Acts neither A. V., R. V., nor the 
American Revision gives the full and literal force of Paul’s expression. 
Rotherham gives, “unusually reverent of the demons;” Darby, 
“given up to demon worship;” Vincent says that what Paul means 
to say is, You are more divinity-fearing than the rest of the Greeks, but 
taking his own remarks on this statement and his further comments 
on I Cor. x. 20 and especially those on Mark i. 34, it would appear 
more correct to say demon-fearing. (See, Word Studies in the New 
Testament.) In the passages from Deuteronomy and Psalms it also 
should be demons instead of devils. 
See pp. 22-31. 


72 


EFFECTS OF MODERNISM 


reveal to the tribal idol-god with which Israel’s history 
began, according to Criticism, without, however, the 
slightest intimation that Yahweh (Jehovah) was such an 
idol-god? 

Nor does the New Testament alter the conception and 
relation thus established. There is only one God held 
before our view throughout. According to Criticism, His 
record begins as an idol-god of an insignificant nomadic 
people, back of which, if this is true, there was a demon, 
according to Paul, and from this has evolved the one true 
God—‘‘the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 
Back of all this unpromisingness, we are to suppose that 
His shadowy figure ever stood, gradually emerging until 
revealed concretely in the man Jesus. 

This account of God’s history is a fit correlative to that 
of man’s evolution from the anthropoid apes. These 
theories lock arms; they are fit companions. 


73 


CHAPTER IV 


REFUTATION OF MODERNISM 


These matters concerning the understanding of the Bible 
may be considered in the light of jurispudence, and sub- 
jected to the universally acknowledged laws of evidence.! 

The case may be stated as follows: Is the Old Testament 
a true narrative of fact or a creation of falsehood? The 
decision must be the latter if the views of Criticism are 
correct. Documentary or written evidence is to supply 
the testimony by which judgment must be reached. Let 
our examination be conducted in accordance with the 
rules and principles which govern courts of justice. 

The charge is that the literary prophets and the schools 
of Deuteronomistic and priestly writers compiled the 
Hexateuch, much of it their own creation, which they 


1Jn this chapter the line of argument employed by Prof. Simon 
Greenleaf, LL.D. (‘a writer of the highest authority on legal sub- 
jects’) in his valuable work The Testimony of the Evangelists, is 
adapted to the problem under discussion here. Though used relative 
to another matter by him, it was one, however, very closely connected 
in nature and evidence with our present subject. 


74 


REFUTATION OF MODERNISM 


combined with ancient myth and legend. Their labors 
are supposed to have extended over at least three or four 
centuries. 

The question is, Did they practice this piece of decep- 
tion upon their nation, or did the prophets and men like 
Ezra and Nehemiah simply revive, freshly emphasize, 
and apply a body of legislation which had served from 
the beginning as the foundation and constitution of the 
Hebrew people? 

The issue turns upon the character of these men, their 
competency, truthfulness in presenting what came under 
their observation, and the degree of accuracy with which 
they record passing events. If their credibility in these 
respects can be established, the greatest possible sum of 
probability will exist that they did not practice such 
deception as that in which the critical views involve them, 
and therefore, the Pentateuch existed from the beginning 
in the form in which we now possess it, and was in fact a 
possession of Israel from the time of their invasion of 
Canaan. 

Now, the credibility of these witnesses is capable of 
ready moral demonstration, if we will put the nature and 
character of their testimony to the test, bearing in mind 

75 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


the essential marks of difference between true and false 
witnesses. 

These writers record transactions with such detail as 
to persons, places, customs and circumstances that these 
narratives must be considered unimpeachable evidence 
that they possessed ability to discern and comprehend 
what was before them; evidence that their opportunities 
to observe were of the best, that a high degree of accuracy 
marks their records, and that their integrity in relating 
them cannot be questioned. The sum of evidence is 
competent, therefore, by reason of number and variety; 
it is cumulative in character, and conclusive by vir- 
tue of the unity of result, found coupled with mani- 
fest diversity. 

Here, then, this rule of law may be applied: 

The credit due to the testimony of witnesses depends upon 
the following conditions: first, their honesty; second, their 
ability; third, their number and the consistency of their 
testimony; fourth, the conformity of their testimony with ex- 
perience; and fifth, the coincidence of their testimony with 
collateral circumstances. 

First, as to their honesty. Here they are entitled to the 
benefit of the principle derived from the general course of 

76 


REFUTATION OF MODERNISM 


human experience, that men ordinarily speak the truth, 
when they have no prevailing motive or inducement to 
the contrary. That no such motive or inducement existed 
with these witnesses is manifest, for their testimony was 
decidedly adverse to their best worldly interests.’ Because 
of it they suffered greatly and labored under constant 
disadvantages, for it is evident that there was an influential 
school of so-called prophets in Court circles which resisted 
them and used the powers of government to persecute 
them; while the people also generally scorned these men 
and despised their message. 

These circumstances furnished them with every possible 
motive to review carefully and make very sure of the 
grounds of their faith and the evidence for the great facts 
and truths which they asserted. These motives were 
pressed upon their attention by sad and painful experience. 
It was not morally possible for them to be deceived. If, 
in company with those writers and redactors whose literary 
work it is considered these prophets inspired, they were 
actually employing deception in producing such literature 
as the Hexateuch, then surely there was present in their 
circumstances every conceivable motive for abandoning 
this course of falsehood and ceasing their fraudulent work. 

77 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


Plainly they were men of our ordinary constitution and 
of our common nature. They were swayed by the same 
motives, animated by the same hopes, affected by the same 
joys, subdued by the same sorrows, agitated by the same 
fears and subject to the same passions, temptations and 
infirmities as ourselves. Their writings show them to 
have been men of vigorous understanding. There is 
no motive to be found for the fabrications which 
Critical views make them responsible for having pro- 
duced. 

Again, we cannot read their writings without feeling 
that they were good men, of tender conscience, acting 
under the influence of an abiding sense of God’s presence. 
They abhorred falsehood. Yet if the Critical views are 
correct, they were producing works characterized by 
imposture, and known by them so to be. 

From the absurdity in which these views involve the 
whole matter there is only one escape. It is to acknowledge 
that these writers were testifying in regard to an already 
completed work, carefully considered and accepted as 
the truth. If they compiled or wrote books in which they 
testified that Moses made speeches, performed acts, 
enacted laws, most of which were their own creation, they 

78 


REFUTATION OF MODERNISM 


certainly were sensible of the falsity and imposture of the 
procedure. But all the evidence goes to prove that they 
were not knaves, but honest men. 

Their ability is plainly established by their extant work. 
They were not only good men, but also men of sound mind, 
and quite evidently of at least average and ordinary 
intelligence. 

As to their number and consistency. The Prophets, the 
Psalm writers, Ezra, Nehemiah, and the others provide 
a great assemblage of witnesses. In their writings they 
give the required “ concurrent testimony,” even though 
they were not contemporaries. There is consistency 
throughout, and its force is not lessened in a merely legal 
sense, even though the claim is granted that discrepancies 
exist in the recording of the same events. 

On the next point, conformity of testimony with exper- 
tence, that would, of course, at once be denied them, since 
they deal in the main with the supernatural and miracu- 
lous. Where inspiration and revelation are claimed, testi- 
mony proceding from such a source cannot expect to be 
considered in conformity with experience. The writers 
must either be deceivers or deceived in this matter, for 
criticism does not allow such things; since they are con- 

79 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


trary to human experiences, they are, therefore, incredible. 
So say the radical critics. 

But if we are permitted to infer from what we see and 
know, that there is a Supreme Being by whom this world 
was created, we may with equal reason certainly believe 
Him capable of works which we have never yet known 
Him to perform. It is not irrational to believe that such 
a God, for purposes of revelation, would depart from His 
ordinary course of action and thereby give necessary 
attestations of Himself. Nor can it be shown that the 
testimony in question is not in conformity with what 
might be expected as a result of such supernatural ex- 
periences. That these experiences were real is at least 
suggested by the vital difference and evident superiority 
of their religious testimony over that of all others of a 
religious nature outside the Bible. 

Finally, the coincidence of their testimony with col- 
lateral facts and circumstances otherwise known cannot 
be successfully denied. Variety and minuteness of detail 
are usually regarded as certain tests of sincerity, for a 
false witness will not willingly detail circumstances in 
which his testimony will be open to contradiction, nor 
multiply them where there is danger of his being detected 

80 


REFUTATION OF MODERNISM 


by comparison with other accounts, equally circumstantial. 
He will deal, rather, in general statements and make 
broad assertions, and will endeavor to employ or invent 
such names or particular circumstances as best promise 
to be out of the reach of all opposing proof. This is not 
the way of the Biblical writers. 

In the testimony of true witnesses there is a visible and 
striking naturalness of manner and an unaffected read- 
iness and copiousness in details of circumstances, without 
regard to the ease or difficulty of verification or detection. 
This is the manner of the Biblical writers. 

Under this head there is also the growing witness of 
archeological discovery, to provide the needed coincidence 
of testimony with collateral and contemporaneous facts 
and circumstances. The abundant and minute references 
to manners, customs, and many other matters of time and 
environment which mark all the Scriptures, afford plenty 
of opportunities to apply the archeological test to the 
truthfulness of the whole record. There is no formality 
about them, preface and explanation as though introduced 
by design; on the contrary, there is a striking naturalness, 
rarely, if ever, present in creations of fiction. 

Such features are also to be noted as the absence of all 

81 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


parade of the writers’ integrity, any anxiety to be believed, 
or to impress others with a good opinion of themselves, 
or effort to excite wonder or astonishment at the greatness 
of the events theyrecord. Complete is the evident assump- 
tion that well-known events are being recorded which are 
undoubtedly to be believed, like any other matters of 
public history. 

These considerations, in accord with laws of evidence 
universally accepted and acted upon, certainly constitute 
a connected argument for the acceptance of the Old Testa- 
ment, and, in fact, of the entire Bible, as authentic, 
reliable and honest in its claims and statements. The 
evidence goes to prove that no such imposture as the plan 
of the critics involves was really practiced; in short, that 
the Old Testament abounds in that kind of evidence 
which makes the probability of its genuineness and truth- 
fulness so strong that, after examination according to 
legal requirements, i¢ must be considered sufficient to satisfy 
the most cautious, and enforce the assent of the most reluctant 
and unbelieving, unless they are unwilling to be convinced 
by such evidence as governs in all the common affairs of men. 

In the testimony of these witnesses there is a total 
absence of the kind of particulars which generate suspicion. 

82 


REFUTATION OF MODERNISM 


Hence, another rule of law applies to them, namely, that 
in such absence every witness is presumed to be credible 
until the contrary is shown; the burden of impeaching his 
credibility rests on the objector. The critics, by reason 
of their charges, carry this burden. 

Another rule is: A proposition of fact is proved when 
its truth is established by competent and satisfactory 
evidence. The proposition of fact that these witnesses 
were honest, had ability, manifested truthfulness and 
accuracy is established by the competent and satisfactory 
evidence produced in the foregoing argument, so that the 
presumption must be considered established that they 
did not practice the imposture with which the critical 
views charge them. 

Hence, we may safely conclude that the greatest pos- 
sible sum of probability exists that the order of the Bible 
history and the authorship of its books are exactly what 
we find them affirmed to be as we read through from 
Genesis to Revelation. 

There is really only one line of argument presented by 
the Critics against these conclusions. It is drawn chiefly 
from the silence of the record in the historical books— 
Judges through Kings—silence as to the order of things 

83 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


given in the Pentateuch, buttressed by the fact that pre- 
vailing conditions were manifestly contrary to that whole 
body of legislation and ceremony. 

Now if these books of history had been written as part 
of the design, and with the purpose in view, which Criti- 
cism claims, that of supporting and emphasizing the 
Deuteronomic conception first promulgated as national 
law in Josiah’s reign, it is not reasonable to conceive of 
this history being written without its compilers’ making 
quite constant reference, more or less full in detail, to 
the fact that all the conditions described were contrary 
to that central and all-important conception which these 
Deuteronomistic writers were imposing upon the Hebrew 
people, commencing with the reform movement of Josiah’s 
day. Only in this way could it be made contributory to 
their general plan. This is not the case, the Critics being 
witness. But if both as to order of production and also of 
history these books follow after the Pentateuch and Joshua, 
there is consistency and unity in the whole series. There 
is none if we are to conceive that the major part of Deu- 
teronomy, found in Hilkiah’s book, comes first, the Judges- 
Kings series later, and not until a century or two later 
still the completed Pentateuch as now in our hands. 

84 


REFUTATION OF MODERNISM 


The explanations given by the critics of these historical 
books is not demonstrative of their claims as to the origin 
and making of the Bible, for it is more reasonable to con- 
sider this history to be a record of decline from original 
establishments and constitution than of evolution out of 
pagan conditions. This will receive further consideration 
in Chapter VI. 


85 


CHAPTER V 


THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 


We are now to consider a use of the Bible? based upon 
the modern approach to it already examined. This ap- 
proach, as we have seen, is made along sociological lines, 
and the Bible’s religious development thus studied is 
supposed to present an evolution from ideas and conditions 
of a pagan, nomadic, tribal, and provincial order to the 
exalted morality and world-perspective of the writing 
prophets. With them, we are told, the social-redemptive 
program became one of universal application, so that 
Jehovah who at the first was only the tribal god of an 
insignificant and nomadic people became the God of the 
whole earth, the one true and only living God. This 
revelatory movement reached its consummation in the 
New Testament in which we have God made known as 


1 This is set forth by Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick in his recent 
book The Modern Use of the Bible (Macmillan, Sept., 1924). It is 
examined in this section. The references given in footnotes refer 
to this work. 


86 


THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 


“the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Here 
seemingly the evolution stopped, and nearly two thousand 
years have brought nothing new to us. No further advance 
has been made during all this period, and yet this religious 
evolution of the Bible, quite unique in the world’s history, 
did not cover much more than one thousand years accord- 
ing to critical estimates. It is admitted by them to be 
superior to all other religious movements whether of 
previous, contemporary, or subsequent development. 

Further, the Bible manner of treating those things 
which are common to all such movements is beyond ques- 
tion unequaled. The Bible gives us the highest form of 
religious development known to man. It contains a rich- 
ness of content unsurpassed by any other body of litera- 
ture. It makes known what is of ever abiding significance 
to the moral and spiritual welfare of the human race. 
The Bible in its splendid isolation is one of the strongest 
arguments against the widely accepted evolutionary 
hypothesis of world development. It smashes through, 
and leaves a wide open breach in the line of supposed uni- 
formitarianism in either the physical or spiritual history 
of the world and maintains its commanding position 
against all attacks. 

87 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


The Bible, however, so it is said, is a hard and difficult 
book for the modern man to understand; hence the great 
effort to make a use of it which will appeal to his highly 
developed scientific and historic sense.2 The difficulty 
arises from the fact that those Biblical ideals and expe- 
riences which are admitted to possess intrinsic merit and 
abiding importance are presented in categories of the 
time in which the writers lived. For example, the New 
Testament is written in the category of the first century 
world-view, much of which the “well-instructed man of 
today” considers it impossible to accept. Consequently 
the modern demand is for a rephrasing in categories 


2 This is made in seeming forgetfulness that man’s first great need 
is to see himself as God sees him, sinful, helpless, and hopeless, a 
moral and spiritual ruin, needing a spiritual regeneration, as much 
as the chaotic earth needed just such a preparatory physical work 
before it could be inhabitated by man. The natural man does not 
understand the things of God (I Cor. ii.), nor by worldly wisdom can 
he know God (I Cor. i). He must be “born again,” receiving spiritual 
life through faith in God’s word, and the acceptance of Christ as 
God’s appointed Saviour, whose atoning death alone redeems and 
saves eternally (Rom. chs. i-iii; John iii; Titus ii. 11-14; iii. 3-8; 
I Peter i; Heb. x). 

3 Such as miracles, demons, angels, fiat creation, apocalyptic hopes, 
eternal hell, bodily resurrection; and in the Old Testament “gross 
authropomorphisms,” ‘‘belated ethics,” ‘Semitic cosmology,’’ etc. 
(e. g. pp. 5, 89). 

88 


THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 


suited to the present world-view of those ever abiding and 
reproducible experiences of vital religion which are found 
in the Bible. Just what this involves we shall see later. 

If we take the road of approach to the Bible which 
Modern Criticism has built, the chronological arrange- 
ment of the strata which make up our Bible * forms one of 
the most important guides to Biblical study and inter- 


4 The best that can be said is that this chronological arrangement 
is approximate (p. 6), and that the result is only “‘in its outlines well 
assured” p.7. We have examined them and these outlines seem very 
uncertain; they in fact appear too much like the quivering line drawn 
by the seismograph. They leave a man in a chaotic state of mind 
regarding the Bible. ‘‘The reader, of course, must never take the 
actual order of documents in our Bible as indicative of the chronolog- 
ical order in which they were originally produced. The first chapter 
of Genesis, for example, is very late” (p. 12, footnote). Some day 
we will probably get the Bible published in its chronological order, 
and then we may expect to find parts of Genesis in about the middle, 
Judges perhaps at the beginning, the Psalms scattered along at 
different points, though most of them are considered very late, and 
Daniel would come near the end of the Old Testament. Nevertheless, 
we are assured that this approximately chronological order, despite 
“endless minor uncertainties,’ has an importance which “from the 
standpoint of practical results is difficult to exaggerate” (p. 7). From 
this grab bag of approximate results and confessed difficulties a spirit 
of wisdom is obtained in some way by which “we can trace the great 
ideas of Scripture in their development from their simple and ele- 
mentary forms, when they first appear in the earliest writings until 
they come to their full maturity in the latest books” (p. 7). 


89 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


pretation. By pursuing this road the student, it is sup- 
posed, will learn how to trace the growth of faiths and 
ideas regarding, for example, God, man, duty, sin, worship, 
from primitive and childlike origins as found in the Old 
Testament up to the highly developed ethical teaching 
of the New.° Even so, “the nub of difficulty” remains 
that so much of all this material is expressed in categories 
now outgrown by the world. Throughout the Bible, its 
writers think and speak in the terms of the outworn Semite 
cosmology, whereas today the universe must be studied 
in the light that modern science has shed upon it. This 
makes it necessary to think in the category of evolution 
as to the whole order of creation, earthly and heavenly. 
Then there are the categories of demonology, angelology, 
miracles, apocalyptic hopes, the latter two entailing in 
some degree divine invasion of world-affairs, a cata- 
strophic class of ideas quite unacceptable to modern minds 
which dwell in the realm of evolution. These things are 
considered as vital hindrances to the modern man’s use 
of the Bible. Of course, raising the question as to whether 
he is right in rejecting such categories is practically ruled 
out of order. His present vantage ground of advancement 
len igre Eis 6 MA 
90 


THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 


is accepted as being sufficiently patent to put the matter 
of his being right beyond question. 

The conclusion of the whole matter then is this: since 
this Book is (1) the one Christians must continue to use 
as a sufficient guide in all moral, spiritual, and religious 
relations because it records the most wonderful religious 
development of all time, admitting by common consent, to 
contain all that is essential to the moral and spiritual 
growth of mankind, and yet (2) it must be considered “‘an 
old Book in a new world,” ® because its language, style of 
ideas, and in fact the entire framework in which its teach- 
ing is set, have all become outgrown by the world, 
the necessity for its abiding use (3) raises the problem 
of making its study and interpretation consist chiefly in 
the process of extracting from it those ideas, ideals and 
spiritual experiences which are judged to beabiding and re- 
producible, leaving behind that mass of outgrown categories 
to which we have referred and to which, we are told, no 
well-instructed man of today could possibly subscribe. 
What is thus extracted must then be rephrased;’ in this, 


EP rao, 

7 We are told we must “decode the abiding meanings of Scripture 
from outgrown phraseology” (p. 122). Paul was mistaken when he 
thought we had God-breathed Scriptures (writings); probably what 


91 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


it is confessed, ‘‘the most difficult task of all remains: 
building up constructive statements of what we posi- 
tively do believe in new formulas endowed with the same 
persuasiveness and penetrating power which the older 
mental categories once possessed.”® For this nothing 
could suffice or avail short of inspiration such as the Bible 
writers assert for themselves. This claim has not been 
advanced since the close of the first century by any 
one worthy of serious consideration. Even Modernists 
hitherto have prudently refrained from any such pretense. 
Yet that alone could accomplish the above task, for the 
admissions are made “‘that the Spirit of God was behind 


that process and in it,’’ of which the Bible is the result, 


and “that God was speaking.” ® 


he meant was that we had God-breathed ideas or ideals clothed in 
the very imperfect and temporary dress of man-made conceptions, 
for the “‘decoding demanded by the facts which we are now consider- 
ing is . . . not between transient customs, but between elemental 
forms of conception, a manifest divergence between our habitual 
presuppositions of thought and those used in Scripture” (p. 123). 
From this it would seem that Scripture can be broken, although the 
Lord Jesus said “cannot” (John x., 35); little would it seem to matter 
about its “jot or tittle” of which He spoke (Matt. v. 18); and what 
are we to think of such wholelsale rejection of Scripture’s phraseology, 
if “men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 
WA TS! SAB 
Call elt bat PED susan: 
92 


THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 


Let us consider what it means to use the Bible in the 
manner thus proposed. There is hardly need for further 
remark as to the Old Testament since the modern view and 
use of it have been considered in earlier parts of this book. 
As to the New Testament, plainly its writers believed in 
demons, angels, miracles, bodily resurrection, and apocalyp- 
tic hopes. We are told they used these “mental frame- 
works and categories of explanation”’ because they knew 
of no other way to express what was real and vital to 
them in the matter of religious experience. Likewise 
when it became a question of interpreting the person 
and work of Jesus, they could do no better than make use 
of current and accepted categories, such as that of ‘‘ Mes- 
siah,” with its framework of apocalyptic ideas, and 
“Logos,” with its framework of Hellenistic philosophy.!° 
But all of these categories are declared to be inadequate 
for the present day. 

Our author holds that the light of modern knowledge 
has dissipated the ignorance in which demonology flour- 
ished. As to angels, nothing is known of them today— 
who ever saw one? Miracles simply do not happen, cer- 
tainly not of the kind so often found in Scripture. The 

10 Pp, 216, 217. 

93 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


modern man comes to Scripture and says, “‘These are 
mental frameworks and categories which I cannot use; 
they mean nothing to me since they are not verified by my 


3 


experience,’ and he is tempted to go further and say, 


9 


“This book is of no use to me.”’ That such a conclusion 
would result in irreparable loss to him, we are assured 
from nearly every quarter. This then raises the problem 
of how to find what is useful today in the Bible. We are 
told that the reader must be brought to see that there are 
abiding meanings and reproducible experiences wrapped 
up in the outgrown phraseology of Scripture, and that 
deep within its settings of thought and speech there are 
experiences and convictions for which the book essentially 
stands, spiritual truths which are in themselves perma- 
nently valid, timeless and unchanging messages. The 
deeps of the Book call to the deeps of the human heart. 

But how, then, shall we explain what those categories 
which the modern man discards because of his superior 
intelligence meant to those who could and did use them? 

What is meant by the category of demonology as 
Scripture presents it? It is nothing more nor less than 
“a transient phrasing of abiding experiences . . . nothing 

MPp, 61, 95. 

94 


THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 


that the devils ever stood for has yet gone out of human 
life. Personal temptation; various aspects, allurements, 
and results of sin; disease, ... human suffering and 
death—all this is with us still.”” ‘Everything the devil 
and his hosts ever meant is with us yet.” ?” It is not, then, 
the fact that the devil and demons actually exist, are 
separate spiritual beings, as the Bible writers seemed to 
think. It is rather that there always have been and still 
are certain very real experiences which to these writers 
were most intelligibly explained by the use of the current 
demonology. That category seemed to them the most 
available explanation of these particular abiding expe- 
riences. We are asked to keep the truth of the experiences, 
but utterly reject any idea of the reality of such agency as 
that of the devil and his hosts. 

What about angels? Angelology, too, is only a phrasing 
of experiences, real enough in themselves, in another 
category of those ancient times since outgrown. “Angels 
represent our fathers’ profound and practical conscious- 
ness of the reality, friendliness, and availability of the 
spiritual world,” whether that be in strengthening the 
spirit in temptation, opening prison doors, giving peace 

MED. Lely bees 

95 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


and power in time of stress, or appearing in other ways 
to accomplish God’s ministry to man.* It is not, then, 
that they saw angels (and we have no personal knowledge 
of their actual existence, or non-existence, for that matter), 
but the angel-idea was found suited by them for use as a 
vehicle to express their spiritual experiences. 

The modern man may be quite humble and “refuse to 
claim omniscience by denying” that such beings as angels 
exist. Evidently, that does not prevent him, however, 
from virtually denying that the Biblical writers meant 
what they said when they describe angelic visitation, 
ministry, and communication as being commerce with 
actual spiritual beings. Did the Lord mean that the 
Father would send Him twelve legions of “‘spiritual ex- 


periences,” 


and what can He mean when He speaks of 
joy in the presence of the angels over a repentant sinner? 
(Matt. xxvi. 53; Luke xv. 10.) 

What about miracles? Again, they are simply the 
outworn ‘‘phrasing” of real enough experience. We 
must seek “to discover what, if any, was the vital experi- 
ence that our forefathers were trying to express by their 
category of miracle.” ‘4 This, we are told, was simply the 

18Pp, 124-126. MP, 156. 


96 


THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 


“saying that superhuman power is here, available for use, 
and that when men are open to its inrush and control, 
it is not easy to set limits to the results that may ensue. 
Granting all the associated aberrations and credulities 
of the miracle-idea, it was nevertheless our forefathers’ 
way of saying that they believed in the living God, whose 
ways of working are not bound within the narrow limits 
of man’s little knowledge. . . . The crucial question for 
modern Christianity to face is not first the credibility of 
this or that narrative nearly two thousand years old, but 
the possibility of retaining in our modern scientific thought 
such a vital and vivid expectancy of divine action as our 
fathers often phrased in terms of miracles.’’ 1° 

Little wonder that Dr. Fosdick must say that, ‘‘ap- 
proaching the Bible so, there are some narratives of mir- 
acles there which I do not believe. ... Certainly, I 
find some of the miracle-narratives of Scripture histor- 
ically incredible. Others puzzle me . . . and about many 
an ancient miracle-narrative a man may well suspend 
judgment, awaiting light.”’® The miracle-narratives 


1% P, 158. 

16 Pp. 163, 164. Among those regarded as “incredible” the follow- 
ing are named: the sun standing still, which ‘“‘may be poetry;” the 
story of Jonah and the fish, which “‘may be parable;” the miraculous 


97 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


which he “cannot help believing” are those which describe 
“experience in terms of miracle so that we recognize 
that the same kind of experience is open to us, or would 
be open, if we were receptive of God’s incoming power.” 
Such narratives are “fundamentally credible and useful.” 

This class of miracles consists for him of the guidance 
God gives as much now as ever to men and nations, of 
divine calls and commissions received today as much as 
ever, of spiritual endowments, answered prayers, and 
transformed lives from which the power of God is trans- 
mitted to others—‘‘all through the Scripture such activity 
in divine power is presented in terms of miracle.”” Ex- 
amples are found in Israel’s release from Egypt, God 
speaking to Samuel, Paul’s conversion, the Church’s 
enduement with power, as on the day of Pentecost. These 


aspects of the plagues in Egypt and the fall of Jericho’s walls, which 
“may be legendary heightenings of historical events;” ‘‘the amazing 
tales of Elijah and Elisha [which] may be largely folk-lore;” and, in 
the New Testament, finding a coin in a fish’s mouth, or walking on 
water, or blasting a tree,—these “‘may be just such stories as always 
have been associated with an era of outstanding personalities and 
creative spiritual power.’”’ The puzzling ones mentioned are the 
miraculous draft of fishes which might be one of “‘many symbolic 
literary devices in an Oriental Book,” and “the physical aspects of 
the resurrection of Christ,” such as his eating fish, passing through 
closed doors and offering to let Thomas touch his hands and feet. 


98 


THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 


are in fact experiences being reduplicated today, only in 
describing them we do not robe them “with the marvelous 
drapery which ages when miracles were part and parcel of 
men’s common thought habitually employed in their 
imagination of events, but, for all that, the abiding exper- 
ience involved in them is clear, and it is as true and as 
possible for our day as for theirs.” 1” 

After all, they are not miracles in the way we use that 
term, but simply ordinary experiences which have been 
draped by the Oriental mind in terms of the marvelous 
and figurative, which it would never occur to anyone to 
use today in telling about them. Are not the miracles of 
Scripture by this treatment either looked upon as in- 
credible, or frittered away? 

The reasoning is of the same order in regard to the 
second coming of Jesus—His return in bodily form. The 
New Testament writers felt fully assured of the complete 
and final world triumph of the Master. Their experience 
with Him made them conscious that that conquest must be 
accomplished in the end by such a “towering personality.” 
They knew no better way of expressing this confidence in 
Him than by using the current category of apocalypticism, 

7 P, 165. 

99 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


and they boldly taught that Jesus would return in person 
to accomplish His final victory, coming on the clouds of 
heaven with power and great glory. Of all the books of 
the New Testament, the Fourth Gospel alone is said to 
“spiritualize the event,” and the reason given is that its 
writer was trying to reach Hellenistic readers to whom 
the dramatics, catastrophic features, and physical resur- 
rections of the Jewish apocalyptists, were very distasteful. 
But it is admitted that just the latter view prevails else- 
where in the New Testament. “The book of Revelation is 
built upon it. When Paul lets his imagination dwell on 
God’s coming victory, he draws the familiar picture with 
which his Jewish training had acquainted him long before 
he had known Jesus: the sudden, physical coming of the 
Messiah upon the clouds, the ascension of the living saints 
to meet him in the air, the resurrection of the righteous 
dead, the day of judgment, and the final destinies.” 8 

What is the kernel that can alone be considered of 
abiding value in these apocalyptic thought-forms which 
are entirely repugnant to the modern man? Simply the 
hope which lies embedded in them, the hope of ‘‘the vic- 
tory of righteousness upon this earth in the coming king- 

18 Pp, 104-110. 

100 


THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 


dom of God, whereon Christ, looking, shall see of the 
travail of his soul and be satisfied.” ‘This is to be achieved 
through human instruments like ourselves, of “‘such a 
spirit that God can work his victory in and through us; to 
persuade others to be transformed by the renewing of 
their minds; to strive for the better organization of society 
that the divine purpose may be furthered, not hindered, 
by our economic and political life; and then to await the 
event in his way and time.” The modern preacher takes 
up the hope, but drops as useless the ancient category, in 
which it is expressed in the New Testament, and says, 
“T do not believe in the physical return of Jesus.” 1% 

The same disposition may be made of the miracle of the 
Lord’s Resurrection. Why not consider it, also, to be the 
phrasing in a category in common use in the first century 
of the disciples’ intense feeling—in fact overwhelming 
conviction—that their Master must live on, that life 
and death such as His must be of ever abiding significance? 
The most natural way they knew of how to pass this 
experience on to posterity was to express it in the category 
of bodily resurrection. Not that this actual resurrection 
took place, but that the Jesus they knew, was so singularly 

oP OF, 

101 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF 7HE BIBLE 


great that the result of His presence in this world even for 
such a brief span must be an ever abiding influence of 
tremendous consequence to mankind. Thus He was once 
dead, but now alive again forevermore, He ever liveth! 
But, I suppose, that ‘‘alive again forevermore” must be 
in the experience of those men who “rediscover”? Him by 
working through Scripture’s outworn phraseology. 

This principle of reducing everything to the status of 
subjective experience in men will dissipate all personality 
apart from man himself, if consistently applied. Devils, 
demons, and angels are gone. Why not God too, so that 
the creature, man, may be left in full possession of the 
field with his ever abiding and reproducible experiences? 
Why may we not say that the category of God, as pre- 
sented in the Bible, simply constitutes the way in which 
its writers at different stages of development expressed 
spiritual experiences which were found higher, more noble, 
and satisfying to their yearnings than any others known 
by them? If we are to consider Scripture teaching con- 
cerning demons, angels, and miracles, for example, as 
simply the phrasing used to explain certain experiences, 
which phraseology the world has outgrown, it does cer- 
tainly seem that there is no reason why we should not 

102 


THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 


understand the same to be true of its teaching as to God, 
both in the Old and New Testaments. Why should we 
suppose their personal God exists any more than their per- 
sonal devil, and such beings as demons or angels? Would 
we not be able, then, to go on and say that “ nothing 
that God ever stood for has gone out of human life” for 
“everything that God ever meant is with us yet,”—love, 
purity, holiness, sacrifice, kindness, hope, righteousness? 
All is reduced to a matter of ethics. 

The logical conclusion seems inevitable that experience, 
and nothing but experience, according to one aspect and 
another of its character, is either God or the devil, angels 
or demons, and also, I suppose, either the heaven or hell 
of Scripture. | 

Guided by this principle, how shall Jesus be inter- 
preted? As far as we know He committed nothing to 
writing. Let us simply consider what we may extract 
from the Gospels as a record of His teaching. We thus 
get a vivid conception of both His experience and char- 
acter. It is of superlative worth, for ‘‘He is the best we 
know, and we will not interpret God in terms less than 
that.” 2° No one ever spake such words of spirit and life 

™P, 188. 

103 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


as He did. But does this mean anything more than that 
He had the deepest, broadest, and highest of all abiding 
and reproducible experiences which a man could have, 
and that He phrased them for us in the most exalted form 
of the category of God ever known, so that in His teaching 
we have the climax to that God-idea which had its dim 
beginning in Israel’s wilderness history? Am I to consider 
all this as anything more than simply the phrasing of His 
experience which is now reproducible in all who rediscover 
Him beneath the outgrown Messiah and Logos categories 
of the New Testament? 

Such are some of the results derived from the applica- 
tion of this principle of interpretation by which the Bible 
is to be made modernly useful. It is really a weapon of 
destruction, striking down sacred things, and leaving us 
alone—off by ourselves with the idea of experience for 
company which we are to suppose the Bible writers have 
explained by the use of such terms as God, devil, demons, 
angels, and miracle-working. It reduces to this same 
level the New Testament teaching concerning the Deity 
of Jesus, His atoning sacrifice, the Virgin Birth, and His 
sinless humanity. 

The Gospels speak of Jesus being tempted by the devil. 

104 


THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 


But this must have been the phrasing of His experience in 
the current category of demonology. We are not to think 
of an external, personal, and known enemy, for the devil 
and his hosts, we are told, simply stood for experiences 
still common to man—temptation, sin, suffering. How 
does this work out in relation to the Lord? Experience 
is made up of feelings and effects resulting from a com- 
bination of inward state and outward circumstances. The 
outward circumstance in our Lord’s case was the wilder- 
ness, its barrenness, isolation, and privation. What was 
the inward state in His case? Bearing in mind the modern 
view of the devil, it could only have been an awful strife 
against evil desires to manifest power to satisfy self-need, 
to act presumptuously to gain a place of national recog- 
nition, and to sacrifice the consciousness of right to evil 
for the purpose of securing world-power.”! Plainly this 
means that 7m Him was sin, even as in you and me. This 
must have been the devil that tempted Him! To just 
such blasphemous conclusions does this principle of inter- 
pretation lead. Yet, as reported, He spoke of Satan as a 
distinct personality having a kingdom, and on one occasion 


21Tn this I refer to the three forms of temptation recorded in the 
Gospels. 


105 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


of coming to Him, but having nothing in Him. This, 
however, we must explain away as simply the “phrasing” 
of experience in a current ‘‘category.” The Gospels tell 
us the angels ministered unto Him. This again was simply 
a phrasing of His experience. Such use of the Bible forces 
us to the awful conclusion that the Lord Jesus possessed 
a nature which manufactured the poison of temptation, 
and seemingly also could produce the elixir of comfort— 
an instance of sweet and bitter waters from the same 
fount. 

This principle of interpretation tends to the annihilation 
of all personality outside of man himself. Human experi- 
ences have been personified in Scripture by the use of 
categories which now appear outgrown. As we have been 
told that the devil and his hosts stand for certain abiding 
experiences of human life, and the angels too, why not 
follow this lead, and consider the category of God as given 
in Scripture to be simply the phrasing of the highest 
spiritual experiences of the human spirit in that class of 
ideas which seem revelatory of a supreme Being, distinct 
and personal, immanent within man yet having a tran- 
scendency which leads him to strive after better things. 
Why not consider God and his hosts the category in which 

106 


THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 


goodness and its blessings in varying degrees have been 
interpreted by the Biblical writers just as the devil and his 
hosts was the category in which wickedness and the misery 
incident to it has been explained? ‘Thus, too, in their 
ignorance of scientific thought they used the idea of place 
as to final destinies and spoke of heaven and hell; but these 
can only be ultimate states of experience to which men 
make either ascent or descent according to whether good 
(God) or evil (the devil) gains ascendency. A principle 
which may lead to such conclusions when consistently 
applied to all parts of Scripture must be utterly false and 
extremely dangerous to use. It is a stepping-stone to 
infidelity. Its consistent application leads us into diffi- 
culties far greater than those it is supposed to dispel for 
“the well-instructed man” of today. 

Many, however, who advocate this principle would 
recoil from such conclusions, and stoutly proclaim faith 
in a God, living and real, whom they consider has wrought 
for self-disclosure through the Biblical process.77 Taking 

22 Dr. Fosdick says: ‘‘What has actually happened is the produc- 
tion of a Book which from lowly beginnings to great conclusions 
records the development of truth about God and his will, beyond all 


comparison the richest in spiritual issue that the world has known. 
Personally, I believe that the Spirit of God was behind that process 


107 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


them at their word, what happens to Scripture when this 
principle of theirs is applied to it? 

It is no longer a question of God having acted to give 
by direct personal intervention, and through the use of 
divinely commissioned instruments a written revelation— 
complete, final, and perfect—any more than He, by a 
special creative act brought man upon the scene. It is all 
a matter of evolving experience through which He has 
struggled to get Himself disclosed to men. At first He 
had to accomodate Himself to very much that was primi- 
tive, childlike, even pagan, so that the revelation appears 
today clothed in many outgrown categories, even in the 
New Testament, with the result that men must now 
struggle back through them to find God in the Person who 
stands highest on the ladder of experience—Jesus. 

We are not to think anything final has taken the form 
of a written revelation. What alone abides is the realm 
of man’s basic experiences, which are constantly being set 
forth in changing categories. Of all such attempts the 


and in it. I do not believe that man ever found God when God was 
not seeking to be found. The underside of the process is man’s dis- 
covery; the upperside is God’s revelation” [p. 30]. ‘‘He who long can 
ponder the fact and not perceive that God was speaking there does not 
earnestly believe in God at all” [p. 95]. 


108 


THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 


Bible is the best and highest in spiritual content. On this 
basis, the modern preacher’s task is said to be that of 
decoding abiding meanings from its outgrown phrase- 
ology. But there is no prospect that finality will be 
reached, for though “we retreat from old categories 
into the experiences behind them,” and “enshrine those 
experiences in positive formulations even though that 
means building up a new orthodoxy,” our own phrasings 
will “in time be dissolved by a new liberalism.” 78 

If the principle that we are now discussing be sound is 
it not incredible that this Book should remain unequaled 
by any other literary work produced during all the cen- 
turies, notwithstanding its so-called outgrown mental 
framework and categories? Why is it abidingly superior, 
without a peer? If out of the first century came such a 
collection of potent writings as those of the New Testa- 
ment,”* how is it that the same ‘‘experience”’ process has 
produced no set of books during the succeeding centuries, 
especially the last two in which men have made such 
wonderful strides in knowledge and wisdom, which even 
in a small way approach the New Testament, or are 


23P, 190. 
24 And it everywhere accredits the Old Testament as God’s word. 


109 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


destined to like results in the world? If inspiration of 
God is the only permissible alternative explanation, and 
it is one which the New Testament plainly predicates con- 
cerning the whole Bible, then inspiration is a revelatory 
process which has ceased. It is evident that nothing has 
been produced in all the years since, with even a shadow of 
right to be considered on an equality with the New Testa- 
ment. God, then, having inspired these men to write for 
all time, did He permit them to use categories which less 
than twenty centuries have rendered unreal, untruthful, 
or which must be considered without meaning today? Is 
it not more reasonable to presume that He directed the 
expression of truth throughout to be clothed in “timeless 
and universal terms”? That the foreshadowing of good 
things may precede the good things themselves, and on 
their arrival that we should leave the shadow and cleave 
to the substance, is quite true. This finds exemplification 
in many ways upon a comparative study of the New 
Testament and the Old. But that is something clearly 
different from what we have been considering—a com- 
plete rejection of ‘the cosmology, demonology, angel- 
ology, apocalyptic, and miracle-idea,’’ which are woven 
into every part of the Biblical fabric. 
110 


THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 


We are assured that ‘‘wide areas of Scripture deal with 
abiding experiences set in timeless and universal terms. 
The elemental needs of man’s spirit for peace, stability, 
comfort, and divine saviorhood; the meaning of tempta- 
tion, sin, remorse, penitence, pardon, and reconciliation 
with God; the basic virtues of honesty, sincerity, courage, 
charity, magnanimity, love; the great hopes of a kingdom 
of righteousness here on earth and of life hereafter—these 
are the fundamental matters in Scripture.” ** But the 
very outgrown categories, of which we have been speaking, 
so contaminate all these things too, that they must stand 
or fall with the rest as far as being considered trustworthy 
and authoritative is concerned. The fact is that the 
foundations in general are destroyed by the Fosdick 
method. 

Let us look a little further. Because demonology out- 
side of Scripture presents many crude and exaggerated 
features, we cannot justly make this a reason for rejecting 
demonology as presented in Scripture. Nor is the lack of 
modern scientific knowledge or experience concerning 
such beings sufficient reason for denying their existence. 
Any open-minded study of demonology, as described in 

2 P, 170. 

111 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


the Bible, shows that it radically differs from all the 
popular conceptions of demonology which prevailed in the 
time of the writers of the Bible. Why this marked differ- 
ence? If we allow inspiration to enter as a factor in the 
way claimed for it in Scripture, who can say its writers 
did not have knowledge imparted to them by it denied to 
others not so inspired? This simple principle applies to 
and accounts for all those categories which appear so ob- 
jectionable to the modern man. He needs to humble 
himself to the fact that what he is using is God’s word, 
something immeasurably beyond contemporary thought, 
knowledge, or experience. 

It is not different as to angelology. Both Old and New 
Testaments are free from “‘the absurdly puerile teachings 
of Rabbinism.” In fact, the truth about demons and 
angels must finally be sought in the words of our Lord. 
This settlement of the question will be satisfactory to 
most Christians. The modern standpoint is distinctly 
Sadducean as to both demonology and angelology. 

There is little wonder that the interpretation of Scrip- 
ture presents great difficulties to the modern man who 
insists upon raising many of them and solving all accord- 
ing to contemporaneous thought. It is quite true that 

112 


THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 


he is living in a world greatly changed from that of the 
times in which the Bible was written, and it may greatly‘ 
help that we can once more visualize through various 
avenues of knowledge the world-conditions amid which 
its writers lived and wrote. This provides us explanations 
of many things peculiar to Oriental life and its circum- 
stances. But in the choice of ways of approaching the 
Bible, neither a barren literalism, nor fanciful and often 
absolutely absurd allegorism can be considered safe and 
sound. And the modern approach, which may be called 
historic and scientific, also fails since it presumes to reject 
what is not a matter of present knowledge and experience, 
knowledge and experience which another decade may 
entirely revise. Yet we are asked to take it as our summa 
summarum, and make contemporary thought the boundary 
wall beyond which we dare not pass, though it be recog- 
nized as partial in most things and defective in not a 
few. 

Not one of these three methods, taken by itself, is a 
sufficient guide in the work of interpreting Scripture. 
Each of them contains something good, and such elements 
in combination may greatly help us in making a sound. 
reverent exegesis. One general principle, however, must 

113 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


bind these elements together for our use. It is this: 
Scripture must be its own interpreter. It is sufficient unto 
itself. This we might expect if it is what we claim it to 
be—God-breathed. 

There are allegories in Scripture which we must study 
and interpret. But that is quite different from adopting 
the allegorical interpretation for the great mass of Scrip- 
ture, as occurs, for example, in the work of Philo and 
Origen. ‘There are types, symbols, parables scattered 
thickly throughout the Book, but we are not by any 
means left to our own imagination to interpret them. We 
have examples of their use and interpretation within 
Scripture. These ought to help us. ‘‘ Wide areas of Scrip- 
ture” are so largely filled with basic and essential truths, 
interwoven with its types, symbols, parables, and alle- 
gories, that there is always abundant material at hand by 
which to check and restrain all that is fanciful and con- 
trary to sound, sober exegesis. The great need today is 
that all Scripture be taken into the reckoning. 

Not allegorical, but rather analogical interpretation is 
the basic principle to govern our procedure. Not analogy 
worked out according to our own unregulated thoughts, 
but analogy operating through careful and patient com- 

114 


THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 


parison of text, context, and the general teaching of 
Scripture. Analogy specifically means a similarity of 
relations. ‘“‘A prince is analogically styled a pilot, being 
to the state as a pilot is to a vessel.” 7° Things which are 
analogous bear some resemblance or proportion to each 
other, they correspond in some particular or particulars 
while differing in others. Analogy, therefore, strictly 
denotes only a partial similarity, as in some special cir- 
cumstances or effects predicable of two or more things 
in other respects essentially different: thus when we say 
that learning enlightens the mind, we recognize an analogy 
between learning and light, the former being in the mind 
what the latter is to the eye, enabling it to discover things 
before hidden. Once this analogy between learning and 
light has been accepted as sound in principle we may 
proceed, for the sake of further illustration and instruc- 
tion concerning it, to compare light and learning in certain 
other respects to determine whether the analogy holds in 
a variety of relations. 

By the use of this analogical process, kept within the 
bonds of Scripture itself, we may study its every part, 
and find that perfect fitness links together in abiding 

% Quoted from Berkeley. 

115 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


interrelation and interdependence all the parts of its 
complex structure. For example, the Levitical order of 
sacrifice bore a very important relation to Israel’s place 
as Jehovah’s people, while its laws were also a manifesta- 
tion of his character and government. Analogous to this 
in the New Testament is the teaching concerning the 
sacrifice of Christ and its relation to the manifestation of 
God, its bearing upon the relation of man to God, and 
in particular upon the relation to God of those accepted 
on the principle of faith according to the value of the 
atonement. Between these things there is analogy, 
similarity of relations, although by comparison very 
much that is different. But the fact that this analogy 
has been established for us by Scripture itself lays a secure 
basis upon which to proceed to determine in what other 
respects the analogy holds just as in the case of light and 
learning suggested above. Thus the features of resem- 
blance between the Levitical and Christian systems may 
be studied and discovery made of what is typical in the 
Levitical of the Christian which is indeed the perfection 
of things, the substance of which the Levitical is now seen 
to be the shadow. The comparative study will also enable 
us to discern what is of an anomalous character, and the 
116 


THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 


contrast between them will serve to emphasize the worth 
of the analogous features. 

The analogical use of Scripture serves as a sufficient 
reply to any reproach brought against it because of its 
anthropomorphic statements. It must always be borne 
in mind that the extent of the analogy or resemblance is 
to be determined within those limits to the application 
of such statements which Scripture itself furnishes. 

Analogy established by the careful comparison of Scrip- 
ture with Scripture opens the way into the spiritual 
meaning of the written Word. It is a process which will 
effectually protect its user from the extravagant and 
fantastic interpretations characteristic of the allegorical 
school represented, for example, by Clement and Origen. 

Many a difficulty in the Bible can be solved only by a 
careful consideration side by side of various circumstances 
and conditions pertaining to that difficulty and these 
related conditions may be scattered over a wide area of 
Scripture. But once assembled and seen in their inter- 
relation they will be found to constitute an adequate 
explanation of that difficulty for any one except a prisoner 
within the walls of contemporary thought. Because 
such difficulties are not dissolved by a wave of the hand, 

117 


ALTERNATIVE VIEW OF THE BIBLE 


many seem to think they are divinely commissioned to 
turn their backs on the problem they are supposed to 
study, and so destroy for themselves, at least, the possi- 
bility of finding its solution. Such rashness is a sad indica- 
tion that the fundamental message of the Book has not 
been apprehended. It bears consistent testimony to 
man’s spiritual destitution and sinfulness, his need of 
new birth, the acceptance by faith of the eternal Savior- 
hood of our Lord. As the one Mediator between God 
and men who accomplished atonement on the Cross, 
He is the only and all-sufficient Savior in whom men must 
believe to be saved, and acknowledge Him to be both 
Lord and God. Otherwise, remaining what Scripture 
calls ‘‘natural men” (1 Cor. ii. 14), they cannot know the 
things of God. To such men it is small wonder that the 
Book’s points of essential difference with modern thought, 
by which standard so much of it is judged to be outgrown, 
are a stumbling-block to their worldly wisdom. Except 
a man become as a little child, the Book must remain 
enigmatical to him, so that seeing he may not see straight, 
and, hearing, as he supposes, yet not be hearing according 
to God. 

The modern use of the Bible which we have been con- 

118 


THE MODERN USE OF THE BIBLE 


sidering builds upon the most insecure of foundations— 
the modern critical approach to the Book; makes use of a 
principle thoroughly destructive in its tendencies; and 
inevitably produces results highly inimical to man’s spirit- 
ual welfare.” 


27 Although Dr. Fosdick emphatically rejects the allegorical inter- 
pretation of Scripture, and considers it absolutely unusable today, 
there could hardly be anything more allegorical.in character than the 
way he proposes to find in the Bible abiding experiences in changing 
categories. Allegorism is arbitrarily treating what is obviously his- 
torical as spiritual or figurative. Demons, angels and miracles, as 
presented in the Bible, are historical, real existences and events of 
actual occurrence. His prestidigitateur method causes them to 
vanish, and their places are taken by figments of the writers’ brains, 
which are nothing more than figures of, or a symbolic way of giving 
expressions to, various spiritual experiences which ever abide and 
are constantly reproducible. According to Dr. Fosdick’s method 
devil, demons, angels and miracles have no existence outside of their 
existence and function in this outgrown apparatus of explanation. 
The Biblical writers evidently believed that devil, demons, angels 
actually existed, and that miracles were historical events; but modern 
men think they know better, and therefore must consider such things 
only to be taken in an allegorical sense. 


119 


CHAPTER VI 


SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 


Observations already made have indicated the view of 
the Bible which is here advocated. We may now define 
more fully what it involves. 

The revolutionary views of Criticism, which alter so 
completely previous ideas of Bible history and also the 
former understanding of its origin and development, 
are contrary to the principles of Divine government and 
at variance with the course which the evidence shows God 
pursued in the revelation of Himself, as stated again and 
again and confirmed in the Bible. 

This weakness of Criticism, too, finds sufficient analo- 
gous confirmation in a survey of history in general, due to 
the fact that God is ever working behind the scenes in 
a providential way. His revelatory way is found only in 
the Bible, and in primary connection with one family and 
nation, but that supplies us with a key nevertheless, 
shown to be of universal significance. 

120 


SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 


Revelation, as Trench says, is God “‘drawing back the 
veil or curtain which conceals Him from men; not man 
finding out God, but God discovering Himself to man.” 
Providence is God behind the curtain, in full control of 
all through His omniscience, omnipresence and omnipo- 
tence. 

The general fact that God is at work in man’s history 
working out His own eternal purposes goes without ques- 
tion. He participates in its course, and may be found 
present in some form at its every crisis, even though we 
may discern His presence only in a very shadowy way 
through our very limited vision and imperfect under- 
standing of the issues which are involved. These may be 
earthly and heavenly, natural and supernatural, seen and 
unseen, human and superhuman. But in the Bible this 
presence culminates in particular and special relations, 
which become of universal import by showing that God 
must through all history be there working, though at 
the best only dimly seen by us, except where His 
written and inspired book of revelation comes to our 
aid. 

When the Most High gave to the nations their inherit- 
ance, when He separated the children of men, He set 
121 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


the bounds of the peoples according to the number of 
the children of Israel (Deut. xxxii. 8). 

The God that made the world ! and all things therein, 
He, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in 
temples made with hands; neither is He served by 
men’s hands, as though He needed anything, seeing He 
himself giveth to all life, and breath, and all things, and 
He has made of one every nation of men to dwell on 
all the face of the earth, having determined their ap- 
pointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation; 
that they should seek God, if haply they might feel 
after Him and find Him, though He is not far from each 
one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our 
being; as certain even of your own poets have said, For 
we are also His offspring (Acts xvii. 24-28; Am. Rev.). 

Daniel says: 

The Most High ruleth over the kingdom of men, and 
giveth it to whomsoever He wills.”” And Nebuchad- 
nezzar, in the day of his conversion and restoration, 


declares in language which echoes the testimony of all 

1 Kosmos, ‘originally order, and hence the order of the world; the 
ordered universe. So in classical Greek. . . . The word is used here 
in the classical sense of the visible creation, which would appeal to 
the Athenians” (Vincent). 


122 


SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 


inspired witnesses, “I blessed the Most High, and I 
praised and honored Him that liveth forever; for His 
dominion is an everlasting dominion and His kingdom 
from generation to generation; and all the inhabitants 
of the earth are reputed as nothing; and He doeth 
according to His will in the army of heaven, and among 
the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay His 
hand, or say unto Him, What doest thou? (Daniel 
iv. 25, 34, 35; Am. Rev.) 
_ God, then, must be working in and through all history 

to the consummation of eternal purposes. He is weaving 
together strands of many varied hues which seem to us 
broken and disconnected, as they stretch across the 
centuries. They may look all tangled and confused, when 
with one quick short life-glance we try to survey the 
expanse over which they are spread; but the eye of the 
Divine Worker sees the end from the beginning—*“‘ His 
eyes observe the nations” (Ps. lxvi.7)—the finished de- 
sign is before Him, every strand has its use, and all is 
being woven together into a perfect fabric, like a tapestry 
of rare color and beauty. When it is finished and spread 
out in the court of the Eternal, it shall brmg to Him 
universal praise and worship. 

123 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


Read the marvelous panoramas of Isaiah, Jeremiah, 
Daniel, as with divinely illuminated vision they portray 
the Divine action, both in retrospect and in prospect 
expanding in various forms until it embraces “‘all the 
kingdoms of the world which are upon the face 
of the earth.” Then, no other conclusion than the 
one just stated is acceptable to the reverent student of - 
Scripture. 

This tapestry of universal history, to continue to use 
our figure, into which is being woven the abiding illustra- 
tions of God’s providential ways in the whole world and 
its changeful course, is not yet finished. Thus far only 
unfinished scenes and figures are open to view. We 
cannot now describe in detail the final and complete story 
of His providential ways, any more than Moses could 
have made known the wonderful mystery unfolded by 
Paul in his epistles. 

But, if the figure is permissible, the tapestry of Divine 
Revelation which was only beginning to be made in 
Moses’ day, is quite unlike that of human history in this 
respect: it is now finished. We can therefore consider the 
wonder of its full design, and get an understanding of 
the mind and truth of God as worked out in it in a rounded 

124 


SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 


whole. With this as a key, we can even look out upon the 
world-course, upon mankind, and already be persuaded 
that in the complexity of human affairs God must be 
working, must have been working through all the ages. 
The Book of revelation takes us behind the curtain to 
make known to us the great principles which rule every- 
where in the ways of God. ; 

In Scripture these principles are acted out for us as in 
a great drama. Israel occupies a central place upon the 
stage which we may call the land of Canaan, and there 
on a reduced scale, but with full and perfect detail, the 
action takes place by which the revelation is made and the 
most far-reaching understanding given of the character, 
will, ways, purpose and glory of the eternal God. The 
whole description and interpretation of this Divine 
panorama is found in the Holy Scriptures recorded by 
divinely inspired penmen. 

We turn and then return, to the Bible, confident that 
light will always be found there by which to penetrate into 
every avenue of human interest and research, and guid- 
ance for mind and heart as exploration proceeds. 

Those principles and the course which God pursues in 
the process of His revelation of Himself with which the 

125 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


views of Modern Criticism come into conflict or of which 
they constitute a denial may now be outlined. 

The fact that God uses history in general has been 
stated. The Bible, however, is the proof of His special 
use of it for particular, specially chosen objects within 
well defined limits of action and within a definite cycle 
of relations. Thus, we may say God’s use of history in 
the Bible bears a relation to His use of history in general. 
This concentrated form of procedure is introduced, it 
would seem, in order that all the features of the revelation 
of Himself thus more vividly manifested in this smaller 
compass may be perceived more clearly by the onlooking 
universe, heavenly and earthly, in all their variety of part 
and measure. In this way, attention is focused from every 
quarter upon one circumscribed scene in which every 
action and character plays a recognizable part, and where, 
too, stands the mystery of the ages—the Cross of Christ. 

We must now endeavor to point out the regulative 
principles which govern, and indicate the steps which 
constitute, the course adopted by the Master as the 
process of the whole marvelous revelation. 

1. All history presents a constantly recurring threefold 
cycle which is especially illustrated in Bible history, thus: 

126 


SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 


(a) introduced and established perfection; (b) degradation, 
the result of departures from this originally perfect order, 
issuing finally in some disaster or catastrophe, invasion 
from without combining with internal conditions to 
produce break-up and change more or less radical; (c) 
revival or restoration in which there is a return to original 
and fundamental principles. Restoration, however, is 
not to the originally perfect state, for the marks of the 
preceding degradation remain evident in some degree and 
exercise a salutary influence consistent with God’s govern- 
ment. Often some higher and richer unfolding of truth 
grows out of them by which we learn that God, in further- 
ing His purpose of revelation, may make use of untoward 
circumstances to manifest Himself. The initial perfection 
is of God; the degradation is of man who proves false to 
his responsibility to maintain what God has established, 
and connected with the disaster which follows upon man’s 
failure is God’s intervention in judgment. Restoration or 
revival follows in which a return to original and funda- 
mental principles is accompanied by God’s intervention 
in salvation. 

This constantly recurring threefold cycle determines 
the grand divisions of Scripture history, and is found 

yi 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


in operation also in the general course of the history of 
all nations and peoples. In the light of Scripture, we 
may account for its universality by the fact that a single 
final issue is being worked out under the hand of God. 

Illustrative stages in this threefold cycle may be traced 
in these epochs: from Adam to the Flood period; Noah 
to Abraham’s call; Abraham to the Egyptian period; 
Israel’s history from the first passover to the Jordan; from 
Joshua to the Judges period; from the commencement 
of the Davidic kingdom to the captivities; from the return 
to Christ; from Pentecost to the present. 

Again, consider creation. First, perfection (Gen. ii. 1); 
then, ruin (vs. 2) in respect to the earth and its immediate 
heavenly relations; then the work of restoration as accom- 
plished in the six days. Take the case of man: created 
perfect and placed amid perfect conditions (Gen. ii); 
degradation and disaster enter in by reason of failure 
to maintain the established perfection (Gen. iii), man is 
driven out of Eden; restoration effected afterward through 
the provision which God Himself makes. But Paradise 
is not restored. That man is to continue to live his life 
amid the consequences of his failure is the edict of God’s 
government and, so living, learn the richness of His mercy 

128 


SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 


and goodness under those very conditions, in a way not 
otherwise possible. 

Thus, too, with Israel. In the first period, a perfect 
code of law and ceremony with the knowledge of the one 
true God, is followed by a second in which the nation 
lapsed into gross idolatry and utterly failed to observe the 
covenant originally established. God brought in judgment 
after judgment, revival after revival, the judgments 
reaching a climax in the great captivities and the work of 
revival in the great return from Babylon. Each revival 
was characterized by some measure of return to the orig- 
inal order, and this is especially noticeable in the Ezra- 
Nehemiah period. 

God thus acted to restore at the same time not erasing 
all marks of His judgment. Nevertheless, the threefold 
cycle was resumed; degradation followed, culminating 
in the crucifixion of Christ, the consequent destruction of 
Jerusalem and world-wide dispersion of the Jewish people. 
From this debacle, restoration will again be effected, as 
prophecy reveals; the kingdom glory will follow. Even 
that, however, closes later in failure with an ensuing judg- 
ment which seals up the record of time (Rev. xx). 

The history of the Church tells the same story. Set 

129 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


up in perfection by the Apostles, departure and degrada- 
tion began to manifest themselves before the end of the 
first Christian century. Conditions grew darker until 
the midnight hour was reached in the Middle Ages. Then 
revival came with the great reformation, and a fresh start 
was made. The record since again has been one of suc- 
cessive decline and revival, with a growing inability for | 
sustained effort as the years have passed and an apparent 
decline of scope or area to which the results of revival 
attain. The New Testament bears witness that this 
would be the general condition of things in its writings of 
latest date. 

Not only, however, is this threefold recurring cycle 
manifest in such great movements as those of Israel and 
the Church; it may also be observed in the life histories 
of individuals given in the Bible. It is further manifest 
in the history of human society, although here its rise and 
fall can not be deciphered as plainly as in those which 
are even more directly of God. Such human movements 
take their rise in, and are governed by their relation to 
the sinful condition of humanity. Since they start from 
its level, we first witness a climb more or less slow from 
certain existing primitive states to those of higher and 

130 


SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 


more advanced character. No sooner is the pinnacle 
reached than corrupting influences begin to manifest 
themselves; decay sets in; next some disaster or catas- 
trophe happens. Out of the chaos which follows, some 
measure of revival afterwards takes place only to end up 
by tracing a similar treadmill on the historical chart. 

This philosophy of history, explained and illustrated in 
the Bible, so as to bring it within our grasp and thereafter 
observable, also, in human society, is catastrophic in char- 
acter and not evolutionistic except in so far as each occur- 
ring catastrophe proves to be a summons to some move- 
ment of recovery or leads to the introduction of some 
element of higher character than had previously ex- 
isted. 

These sequences become so increasingly evident as 
history proceeds that they almost point to the operation 
of a universal law. They seem to indicate the steps of the 
Eternal across the ages of time. This threefold constantly 
recurring cycle is most distinctly defined in the Bible, 
doubtless because it is concerned with God’s revelation of 
Himself as the one true God. The explanation of Bible 
history is plainer than that of mere human history, for 
His personal manifestations and direct communications 

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are there, and elsewhere only what may be termed the 
tracks of His providence. 

2. From a study of the operation of this law, if the term 
is permissible, emerges another governing principle of the 
divine ways in revelation. It becomes apparent that 
God times His acts of self-revealing according to existing 
need, and in every case His action awaits that fullness - 
of time which is according to His perfect wisdom. Thus 
each part of His revelation can only be rightly understood 
in a moral relation to the circumstances existing at the 
time He gave it. 

Let us fix our attention upon His revelatory activities 
consequent upon man’s fall, as that timed the opportunity 
and necessity for what the Bible reveals. 

Three main features may then be noted. (a) His judg- 
ments, never being arbitrary nor merely punitory, ex- 
press the moral and spiritual relations of conditions 
existing. (b) His will is so made known that those who 
will, may hear and obey even in the midst of those condi- 
tions, and go on to enjoy spiritual fellowship with Him 
and become in their human measure morally representa- 
tive of Him. (c) All is so presented that, in meeting 
whatever might be the special need on any given occasion, 

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instruction, edification and application suitable to the 
need of all ages are imparted. Thus does His Word make 
God known as omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent 
in relation to the whole course of history, no matter what 
the variety of circumstance, or the particular period of 
time we may consider. 

This is what the apostle Paul has in mind when he 
affirms that, ‘‘Whatsoever things were written aforetime 
were written for our learning, that through patience and 
through comfort of the Scriptures we might have hope ” 
(Rom. xv. 4). Again, after recounting part of Israel’s 
history, he says, ‘‘ Now these things happened unto them 
by way of example; and they were written for our admoni- 
tion, upon whom the ends of the ages are come ”’ (1 Cor. 
51 GI i 

With this same Apostle again we too may then be sure 
that, “‘Every scripture is inspired of God and profitable 
for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction 
which is in righteousness: that the man of God may be 
complete, furnished completely unto every good work ”’ 
(2 Tim. iii. 16, 17). This, ‘“‘word of the Lord abideth 
forever” (Peter) and the Lord Jesus let us know that 
“Scripture cannot be broken.” 

eB) 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


The synchronism stage by stage of revelation and his- 
tory is evident from a study of Scripture. When the full- 
ness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son (Gal. 
iv. 4). ‘‘For there is one God, one mediator also between 
God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus, who gave him- 
self a ransom for all; the testimony to be born [or, ren- 
dered] in its own times” (1 Tim. ii. 5, 6). He came at > 
the end or consummation of the ages to put away sin by 
His sacrifice (Heb. x. 26). 

These ages had their definite turning points in which 
the development of revelation synchronized with the 
existing conditions. The time of innocence was closed 
by man’s disobedience. This called for great changes, and 
God reveals Himself to pronounce judgment on all con- 
cerned, to be sure, but also to make known other benefi- 
cent purposes which He set forth both by word and action 
(Gen. iii, iv). 

The race now begins life amid the adverse conditions 
resulting from the Fall. There is advancement in material 
things, but degradation in moral and spiritual things. In 
due season God acts. He speaks in warning prophecy by 
Enoch, as Jude informs us, and takes this man miracu- 
lously unto Himself out of the world; when in special com- 

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SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 


munications with Noah, God announces His judgment 
upon it and acquaints him with His plan for his salvation. 
Noah preached righteousness during the appointed season. 
Here elements of advance crop out in God’s revelation, 
and still further development takes place when He recog- 
nizes Noah as the new head of the race after judgment 
has purged the earth. 

Failure and degradation again ensue and in its course 
this time idolatry is introduced. Its spread and prevalence 
become the occasion for fresh action from God, and forth 
from its midst He calls the man Abram to be a special 
witness. With him and his seed God sets in motion a new 
and distinct upward course of action which proceeds and 
is developed during the rest of time, side by side with the 
downward trend of world-conditions under the leadership 
of evil spiritual powers which had invaded it in the age 
after the flood and foisted idolatry upon the race of men. 

This does not mean that God had the control of affairs 
taken away from Him in so far as it pleases Him to exer- 
cise it. The contrary has already been affirmed. It is, 
however, in providential ways that this control is to be 
understood as operative. His ways in revelation from 
the time of the call of Abram are closely connected with 

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ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


Abraham and his seed. In those ways progress and en- 
largement are still to be discerned, as the Bible record is 
studied. One of the stages is timed to connect with the 
fullness of Amorite iniquity (Gen. xv. 16). A ripeness of 
time was reached in the course of history for Israel’s 
deliverance from servitude with its related richness of 
revelation and warning visitation of judgment upon the - 
gods of Egypt, and a little later upon the awful iniquity 
of the Amorites laid bare in the ethical laws given by 
Moses. 

While maintaining testimony as to what is His due 
within their apprehension, so that men are without ex- 
cuse, God permits evil fully to manifest itself before judg- 
ment falls. Thus will His action when examined, be 
justified in the eyes of all, His judgments vindicated. 
But there goes hand in hand with every such manifestation 
of what is called by the Prophet “His strange work” 
a further revelation of Himself. His manifestation of 
judgment upon idolatry waited from Abram’s call to 
abandon it and witness against it in his obedience to 
God’s word until in the time due for it His judgment 
blazed forth in the land of Egypt, the mightiest kingdom 
of that day, that the effect might be felt throughout the 

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SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 


world. A little later His judgment burned to extermina- 
tion in the land of Canaan, the scene of Amorite iniquity, 
which was, also, the highway for all nations, so that the 
divine message might be carried to all parts of the habit- 
able earth. 

There at the cross-roads of the world, God set up His 
arena for all future revelatory action, for none could miss 
learning whatever He might there perform. The action 
thereafter rolls on to its grand consummation in 
Christ and the complete revelation of God and His 
purposes by the Apostles and prophets of the New 
Testament. 

3. As this record of God’s revelation is studied, another 
principle becomes evident. It is that God takes up certain 
samples by the use of which He gives the manifestation He 
desires. The sample He selects may be a nation or it may 
be an individual. Thus, He used Israel to teach us lessons 
of universal and eternal significance. Thus, too, He used 
Abraham, Joseph, Pharaoh, David, Nebuchadnezzar. 
And even though this earth upon which we live be only 
“a floating speck in a cosmos that staggers the greatest 
intellect,” yet God selected it as the stage upon which 
to show His marvelous physical and spiritual creations, 

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ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


and as the scene of His Son’s life and death to which 
indeed universal and eternal significance attaches. 

Alfred Russel Wallace once said that it appeared to him 
that this “floating speck” was at the center of the great 
physical universe. If so, its place is analogous to that 
in which God set Israel, even at a point where flowed all 
the cross-currents of the world’s life; a place central to 
all the nations and peoples of the earth. God it would 
seem chooses the small, the insignificant, the despised, the 
weak, and makes such shine as stars of the first magnitude. 
Is it not this in principle that Paul tells us when saying, 
‘“‘God chose the foolish things of the world, that He might 
put to shame them that are wise; and God chose the weak 
things of the world, that He might put to shame the things 
that are strong; and the base things of the world, and the 
things that are despised, did God choose, yea and the 
‘things that are not, that He might bring to nought the 
things that are: that no flesh should glory before God”? 

4. Israel’s history in particular may now be considered. 
The view Criticism takes of it has already been set before 
us and we have also examined its bearing upon the origin, 
making, and character of the Bible. The argument is 
that the conditions of the Judges can be explained only 

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SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 


by the non-existence of any such system of things as the 
Pentateuch sets forth, and by denying that any such con- 
quest as the book of Joshua describes could have taken 
place, since in either case it would be almost impossible 
to explain how such great religious degradation and such 
general condition of servitude could come to prevail in so 
short a lapse of time. 

But if we accept the priority of the Pentateuch and 
Joshua this is not hard to understand after all. Anal- 
ogies to it have been manifest in history which cannot be 
questioned. The Christian Church was established in 
perfect spiritual order during the twenty-five years after 
Pentecost. Yet before the end of the first century degrada- 
tion had already set in, and its spread was plainly foretold 
by the Apostles. After seventy-five years, at the most, 
we have John’s sorrowful record of the churches in Asia 
few more years this decline had developed to a point 
where no one could recognize them as having any close 
likeness to those of the early and originally perfect Chris- 
tian order of which especially the Pauline epistles are a 
record. 

Because of this decline and degradation are we to con- 

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ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


clude that those epistles were not in existence at the be- 
ginning, or that the teachings they present were not the 
foundation upon which the Church was established 
through the oral ministry of Apostles and prophets? We 
would have to do this if we apply to this history the 
Critical viewpoint as to Israel’s defection to which that 
of the Christian Church so closely corresponds both in 
character and in length of time. But it has no more appli- 
cation to the latter than to the former. The history in 
both cases is strikingly parallel. It all shows how quickly 
man can bring to ruin that which is committed in perfec- 
tion to his responsibility. 

Even though it be shown that the history of the period 
between Joshua and Ezra records no practical conformity 
to Pentateuchal legislation, this cannot be regarded as 
proof that the Pentateuch did not exist. Does the growing 
darkness of the Christian centuries preceding the great 
reformation period prove that no Bible was in existence 
until the days of the reformers? Yet who would have 
known by looking upon the Church or reading its literature 
during those dark ages that such a book as the New 
Testament really existed? 

In a multitude of ways the history of the Church could 

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SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 


be summoned as witnessing that no such Scriptural charter 
of Christianity could be found. Plenty of traditions, 
Church decisions, philosophic speculations and mysticism; 
but the Bible—where was that? Seemingly not known, 
certainly not taught or used publicly. Therefore non- 
existent! Was it? No. Then, was the Pentateuch non- 
existent in the Judges-period? 

There is scattering evidence in the historical books to 
show that the Pentateuch was known during the time 
from Joshua to Josiah, just as there are isolated cases 
during the Christian era which show that the Bible was 
known in certain quarters, at least, during the Dark Ages. 

The point is that Israel’s history conforms to the general 
law already observed—perfection, degradation, restora- 
tion. Convincing proof to the contrary is not to be found. 

5. If the critical view of the Bible history is untenable, 
then the companion theory of the origin and making of 
the Bible becomes equally so, and the supposed brilliant 
achievement of demonstrating the parallelism between 
Israel’s history and the growth of the Bible sinks into 
insignificance. It becomes valueless. 

The question of authorship need not give us a great 
deal of concern. We can discard the elaborate and com- 

141 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


plex documentary apparatus of the Critics. What might 
be called the reasonable things upon which they found 
their distinctions are quite susceptible of other explana- 
tions, and the many unreasonable ones call for scant 
notice. The Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch need 
not be doubted merely because it is evident that another 
hand wrote the account of the great leader’s death and 
burial. There is no need of denying that certain passages 
give evidence of an editor’s work, for, as the various books 
passed through the hands of divinely inspired men, such 
as the prophets, Ezra, and Nehemiah, some such editorial 
work may well have been done by men qualified by inspira- 
tion to do it during the period in which the Old Testament 
canon was arranged. This, however, in no way weakens 
the claims to be authoritative accepted and witnessed to 
within the Bible itself, a most important part of which 
is the testimony of the Lord and His Apostles. 

That documents of record and narrative were used by 
some of the Biblical writers is evident from many refer- 
ences to such in Kings and Chronicles. A similar refer- 
ence occurs in 2 Samuel (i. 18), in Joshua (x. 12, 13), and 
one in the Book of Numbers (xxi. 14, 15). The names 
of these sources are plainly given, which puts them in a 

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SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 


very different category from those conjectural documents 
named by the critics—Elohist, Yahwehist, Deuteronomist, 
Priestly; then a combination of Elohist and Yahwehist by 
some redactor; then a joining of this last with the first 
three; and ultimately a combination of all together, not 
forgetting, however, to mention that the Priestly document 
has several parts originating in different ages. 

Horeover, none of these documents, Criticism tells us, 
is to be considered the work of an individual but of schools 
to which are given the several names mentioned in the 
foregoing. The method by which these supposed docu- 
ments unmentioned in the Bible are distinguished is largely 
one of unsupported assertion. In many instances the 
evidence is fantastic and inconclusive; much of it is merely 
ingenious sophistry.” 

It is admitted by one of their own number that “in 
spite of the labors of critics there still remains a consider- 
able number of passages in which division of sources is 
very uncertain. There is, too, always a certain danger of 
using as criteria comparatively rare words or phrases [a 


2 Reference need only be made to standard works of the Critical 
school such, as the Encyclopedia Biblica, Hastings’ Dictionary of the 
Bible, and the bibliographies mentioned in them to realize that such 
is the case. 


143 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


very favorite resort of this school], which possibly by 
accident happen to occur once or twice in one source or 
the other. The reasonings by which the critical results 
are obtained are very complicated . . . in many cases 
the analysis is . . . difficult and uncertain.” 3 

While critics stand united in the acceptance of the 
documentary hypothesis, their contradictory conclusions. 
among themselves and the varying results at which they 
arrive in the effort to distinguish the documents and 
assign to them the Bible books piecemeal, discredit their 
position and make them look little short of absurd. This 
becomes evident if we compare the works of foremost 
critical writers dealing with the same Bible book. 

6. Without doubt the primary object of the Bible is 
moral and spiritual teaching. But it is evident that the 
history it records is history teaching by example, and is 
an integral part of its structure, essential therefore to the 
revelation given in this Book. This history is history put 


3 ““Hexateuch,” 371, 372; Hastings’ Dict. of the Bible. 

A. B. Davidson, himself of the Critical School, says as to its 
theory, ‘‘Its weakness lies in the incapacity which as yet it has shown 
to deal with many important details, and particularly in the assump- 
tion, absolutely necessary to its case, that the ancient historical books 
have been edited from a Deuteronomistic point of view.” 


144 


SOME PRINCIPLES OF }NTERPRETATION 


to use and made the vehicle by which God is manifested 
and His purposes disclosed. It is permeated throughout 
with manifold moral and spiritual instruction. 

There is manifest selection of material in the Biblical 
narratives, a selection suited to the primary object of 
moral and spiritual teaching, which object is kept con- 
stantly in view in every part and by every writer through- 
out the fourteen centuries which separate the commence- 
ment and the completion of the Bible. 

This paramount object is the bond which unites all its 
diversity into a perfect and harmonious revelation of 
God, His character, ways and purposes. The Bible nar- 
ratives possess a character distinctly different from those 
of merely human production. ‘“ How often we find abso- 
lute silence where man would have enlarged, and how 
often a fierce light is cast on episodes that men would have 
hidden in darkness.” 

Now this interweaving of history with doctrine and 
precept and their complete interdependence make it 
necessary that the history in order to be fit for this service 
should be inerrant. If it is not, all else may well be ques- 
tioned since the historical elements are basic to the moral 
and spiritual elements which pervade the Book. Thus, 

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ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


the dislocation of the historical order which criticism 
advocates means dislocation everywhere, and the casting 
into disrepute of the entire volume. 

These considerations make it necessary to regard infal- 
ibility as an element of the nature of the Bible and a 
guiding principle in its interpretation. No _ historical 
detail may be regarded as having a neglible bearing upon 
the moral and spiritual purpose of the Book. Though 
there may be many instances in which the application of 
this reference has not yet been discovered we cannot 
presume to say that it will not be, even as many of the 
once obscure and seemingly unsolvable problems of the 
Biblical record have received confirmation and elucidation 
as the different departments of human knowledge and 
research have expanded. 

The term infallibility, as here used, may need a word of 
definition. As applied to the Bible, it means that the 
record therein given is in every respect true and without 
error. Both in historical details, even as found in differing 
accounts of the same event,‘ and in the statements of men, 


‘Though there be contradiction between different accounts as 
they are given, this furnishes no just ground for discrediting or 
rejecting either or all of such accounts. Quite often reliable witnesses 
due to some circumstance not known to either, or to difference in 


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SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERERETATION 


good or evil, of Satan, of angels, or of God, we have in 
every case a divinely accurate report in these “Holy 
Scriptures,” ‘the Scriptures of truth.” 

This leads us to another essential element of the nature 
of the Bible. That is its inspiration. Otherwise, it is 
impossible to conceive that a record of what in some cases 
did not pass under the observation of the writer and in 
other cases could not have done so which must be true, 
for example, of the book of Genesis should be inerrant. 
But even that which did come under their immediate 
observation is not simply told as any such matter would 
ordinarily be when told for its own sake, but is connected 
with the distinct operation of the Holy Spirit in the mind 
and heart of the writer, producing an appreciation of it 
in accord with the Divine Mind, and communicating it in 
words framed according to these impelling influences of 
divine origin. Only inspiration can account for predictive 
prophecy and for the way in which history is treated 
throughout the Bible. The fact of inspiration Scripture 


position with respect to what they describe, are found to differ mate- 
rially in describing the same event or scene. But when such unob- 
served circumstances or difference in position become part of the 
evidence, then substantial agreement in their testimony is established 
and conflicting details reconciled. 


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ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


repeatedly affirms; the method is nowhere stated. Its 
phenomena must be gathered from the Scriptures them- 
selves. 

In those who wrote the Bible, the emotions of the soul, 
the energies of the spirit and even the infirmities of the 
body are made use of under the control of the divine 
Spirit, always, of course, in a manner according to the 
purpose in view. The individuality, peculiarity, and 
distinctive qualities of these writers find expression in 
their work, so that the Book is one of ever living interest 
from the human side, while from the divine it proves itself 
in every part to be “the word of God, living, and active, 
and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing 
even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and 
marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents 
of the heart. And there is no creature that is not manifest 
in His sight: but all things are marked and laid open before 


the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.’ 


5 Heb. iv. 12, 13. It is worth noting that what is adduced by 
the Apostle, in this section of the epistle, as an example of the 
living, active, and judging character of God’s Word is the much 
questioned history of the Pentateuch, and one of the Psalms (xcv) 
which makes reference to it. Bear in mind, also, that the Holy 
Spirit is said to speak these words (Ch. iii. 7); also Gen. ii. 2 is 
referred to as what “He hath said” (Ch. iv. 4). 


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This does not prevent our believing that at least some 
of the writers did use existing documents, consulted state 
records and studied various sources of information which 
were at their disposal. There is evidence that they did, 
but the Holy Spirit, who moved them to speak or write, 
gave perfect guidance to them here as elsewhere. It can 
not be denied that He could direct them what to take and 
what to leave, even when what was at hand to use was a 
defective record. They would therefore doubtless at 
times be conscious of a superior power directing and in- 
fluencing them to express what might appear to be in 
conflict with existing records or beliefs. This must have 
been the case with Moses, who though “instructed in all 
the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Acts vii. 22) wrote a cos- 
mogony so entirely different from any other and superior 
to anything yet produced, that even the savants of the 
twentieth century are forced to admit its preéminence. 
The scriptural account of the flood comes out triumphant 
from a similar comparison. 

Inspiration, then, is divine control of the human instru- 
ment, sufficient to insure inerrancy; it implies divine 
selection of the materials used in the communication given 
by that instrument, the Holy Spirit exercising His influ- 

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ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


ence and guiding every faculty, thereby effecting the 
exclusion of error and insuring the use of divine words in 
all such communications. With the Holy Spirit present 
in power, to influence and direct the mind, that mind could 
not do otherwise than submit and select and use that 
which though of human origin, is suited to the Holy Spirit’s 
purpose in treating the subject presented. This is not 
mere dictation—far from it, for all the powers of the mind 
and heart of the instrument are engaged and wrought 
upon so that a divine impress is left upon the whole 
man. 

In view of these conditions it is not surprising to find 
that the prophets afterwards pondered their own com- 
munications seeking the full meaning which was not in 
all cases readily apparent, at first, to them. We are not 
required to regard them as being always in the exalted 
state accompanying the work of inspiration. Hence, 
distinguishing when under the inspiration of the Holy 
Spirit from when they were not, they would find profit and 
enlightenment, in the latter case, from the study of their 
own inspired writings.® 

7. This leads to the consideration of another element 

61 Peter 1., 10-12. 

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SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 


of the Bible consequent upon its inspiration. Its contents 
constitute a revelation. 

The term, revelation, may be applied to the Bible in 
both a general and specific way. Speaking generally, the 
whole Book is a revelation from God in the sense that it 
has been put together for us according to His perfect will 
and direction and hence discloses relations and meanings 
which would not otherwise be known or understood. 

But not everything in the Book pertains directly to the 
revelation of God; this, however, is the underlying object 
in view and everything is made to contribute its quota 
toward this end. All is absolutely true as occurrence as 
recorded, but not all is sanctioned truth, for record is 
made of the words and actions of Satan as well as of other 
wicked spirits and wicked men;—all this is plainly to be 
distinguished from the approved revelation of God con- 
cerning His personality, character, will, purpose, action, 
and doctrine, commingled of truth both objective and 
subjective, which pervades the whole volume. 

The distinction thus drawn, however, does not mean 
that any part of it is without profit, for all has been brought 
together with reference to the underlying object of convey- 
ing a revelation of God in every moral and spiritual rela- 

{51 


ALTERNATIVE ViEWS OF THE BIBLE 


tion, and with special regard to man. No part, not even a 
list of names, could be taken from the Book without doing 
violence to it, and causing loss to us. Nothing must be 
taken from or added to its perfect unity. 

It does not follow, therefore, that all that Scripture 
records as said or done has of necessity the sanction of God 
attached to it. There are things permitted and not ap- 
proved, of which use is made, but which are not to be 
attributed to His command. But whether commanded, 
or merely allowed in their occurrence, His perfect wisdom 
and power is exercised upon them afterward, and every- 
thing made to contribute to the revelation of Himself. 
_ We judge from the fact that He has given us a Book con- 
taining these diverse elements that He intends us to learn 
lessons from them all, and that all relate in some way to 
the object in view. 

God has so written His Word that constant exercise of 
heart, mind, and conscience are rewarded with ever addi- 
tional understanding. Concentrated study is the only 
method of normal spiritual growth accompanied by keener 
discernment and enlarging apprehension of God’s perfect 
will and truth. The reverent student of Scripture in- 
creasingly feels the need of attaining to a comprehensive 

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SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 


grasp of all the scriptures as he seeks to interpret any given 
part of Holy Writ. Each part also has its contextual as 
well as its immediate local or specific relations and no part 
can ever be perfectly understood except in the light of the 
whole. 

Scripture cannot be considered to any solid, lasting 
advantage as a mere volume of isolated texts, any of 
which may be made to mean whatever may please the 
fancy, and even applied to things entirely foreign to its 
context. Scripture is a divine unity, each part of which 
must be considered in the light of the whole. It is the 
work of one Spirit, one Mind. As in a perfect organism, 
every joint and band and member stands in relation to 
the whole. The successful student of Scripture cannot, 
therefore, avoid much exercise, prayer, and searching of 
every part of this divine library, even so, his much labor 
will be in vain unless an abiding sense of human weakness 
in dependence upon the Holy Spirit run through it all. 

The principle we need to bear in mind is given to us in 
2 Pet. i. 20, for all Scripture is of prophetic character 
which entwines itself about the Messianic hope, especially 
the Old Testament. A translator of acknowledged repute 
renders and comments upon this passage as follows: 

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ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


Knowing this first, [that the scope of] no prophecy 
of Scripture is had from its own particular interpreta- 
tion,—idias, epiluseos ou ginetai, “is not explained by 


> as a human sentence. It must be 


its own meaning,’ 
understood by and according to the Spirit that uttered 
it. The “prophecy” is, I take it, the sense of the 
prophecy, the thing meant by it. Now this is not 
gathered by a human interpretation of an isolated 
passage which has its own meaning and its own solu- 
tion, as if a man uttered it; for it is part of God’s mind, 
uttered as holy men were moved by the Holy Ghost to 
utter it. In the ‘‘prophecy of Scripture” the apostle 
has in mind the thing prophesied without losing the 
idea of the passage. Hence I have ventured to say 
[the scope of] ‘“‘no prophecy.”” One might almost say 
“‘no prophecy explains itself.” 
In another place he says: 

There cannot be a doubt that from the fall of Adam 
there was one grand subject of promise and prophecy, 
of hope and expectation—the Seed of woman who 
should bruise the serpent’s head—the Seed of Abra- 
ham—the Seed of David. To say that this was not pro- 
duced in the universal mind of Israel, at all times with 

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SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 


which we are acquainted (and with no nation are we 
acquainted so long, or so well at this early date), would 
be to deny the most certain fact, sustained by the most 
incontrovertible evidence. . . . The testimony of Jo- 
sephus, Tacitus, and Suetonius concur, it is well known, 
as stating that through all the East a notion prevailed, 
that, at the time Christ arose, He should arise who 
would possess the empire of the world. In a word, so 
strong was the testimony and the expectation, that all 
over the East it had reached the Gentiles, and was well 
enough known in the West to be recorded by the two 
Gentile historians of those times. All prophecy must 
(if God’s promise was such and true) have centered here; 
and so, in fact, it does—sometimes given as a relief and 
encouragement to oppressed saints—sometimes break- 
ing through the dark cloud of judgment, like the sun in 
a stormy day; but, from Gen. iii to the last chapter of 
Malachi, beginning, middle, and ending, every ray of 
light converged to this point, that Messiah was to come. 
This is the first enduring sense, the key and object of 
all prophecy. All the rest is subordinate to, and conduces 
to this. I have no doubt myself that this leads us to 
the sense of “private interpretation” in 2 Pet.i.20. We 
155 


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 


have not God’s mind in it unless we take His scope in 
the whole. No prophecy of scripture is of its own inter- 
pretation. It must have its meaning as part of a whole. 


In closing a further word must be said as to the manner 
in which Scripture speaks. The Bible deals with man 
according to the state and circumstances in which he 
finds himself in this world. Things are referred to in it 
in the way they are observed by him in the course of his 
ordinary everyday life. Generally speaking, physical 
facts are thus stated, and though sometimes manifestly 
beyond the contemporary knowledge of the times, yet 
such statements it must be admitted, have proven wonder- 
fully accurate, even in the light of modern science. 

It may be said, then, that the Bible states things as 
they naturally appear and relate to human experience, 
and not as they appear in scientific theory or observation. 
Thus alone could the Book become intelligible and make 
its appeal to men placed in the midst of these appearances 
and experiences. This again is the chief reason that it 
remains unimpaired as revelation, after translation into 
every language under the sun, of use in every age, country 
and clime—the universal Book of universal application, 

156 


SOME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 


ever living, immutable and eternal—the revelation of 
the one true God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, King of the ages, the incorruptible, invisible, only 
God, to whom honor and glory belong to the age of ages. 


157 


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